The high-cost Iraq war entered its sixth year on Thursday as U.S. President George W. Bush was defending his decision to launch the invasion.
GRIM REALITY DESPITE HIGH COST
With a cost of roughly 500 billion U.S. dollars and lives of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops as well as tens of thousands of Iraqis, the five-year-old war has left Iraq in shambles.
Statistics of the civilian casualties vary. Iraqbodycount, a website that follows the death toll count, put the number at nearly 90,000, but many other sources say hundreds of thousands have been killed, largely in sectarian or terrorism related violence.
Meanwhile, about 4.2 million Iraqis have fled abroad or have been internally displaced. Amnesty International said in a latest report that after five years of the U.S.-led invasion, Iraq has become one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
The prospect of economy, another concern for Iraqis after security, is bleak. The country's unemployment rate is generally considered to be at 20 percent or much higher.
Hazem Sharif, 26, graduated two years ago from economy and management department of Baghdad University but he has failed till now to find a satisfactory job.
"At the beginning of the war, most of the Iraqi youths were optimistic because they thought after Saddam Hussein's statue had been toppled, a brilliant future was anything but certain for them," Sharif said.
"Nearly five years have passed, but nothing significant has changed and the image of certain future has gradually changed to be uncertain," he added.
Complaining the slow pace of rebuilding the war-torn country, the young man said the reconstruction "seems like a sick joke since even no one brick has been put to rebuild Iraq."
Oil production, which is the backbone of the country's economy, has been staying below prewar level while public services, including clean water, electricity and cooking gas, are nowhere near satisfactory performance.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday that "the humanitarian situation in most of the country is among the most critical in the world."
The organization said in some areas of the country, people have no functioning water and sanitation facilities, and the poor public water supply has forced some families to use at least a third of their average 150 U.S. dollars monthly income to buy clean drinking water.
BUSH DEFENDING WAR
U.S. President George W. Bush Wednesday defended the Iraq war as a "right decision" despite the high cost in a speech at the Pentagon as thousands of Americans staged anti-war demonstrations across the nation to mark the war's fifth anniversary.
"Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight America can and must win," Bush said. With six sentences began with "because we acted," he bragged about how the war "benefited" Iraqi people by ending Saddam's regime.
The U.S. president acknowledged that the war has "come at a high cost in lives and treasure," but said "those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard University public finance expert Linda Bilmes have reportedly estimated the total bill of the war could be as much as 3 trillion dollars when all the expenses are calculated.
Bush underlined that the United States still face an uphill task ahead. "There's still hard work to be done in Iraq. The gains we've made are fragile and reversible."
Violence in Iraq has dropped down 60 percent since last June after the United States added an extra 30,000 troops, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
Apart from the reinforcement of U.S. troops, the uprising of Sunnis against al-Qaida and ceasefire announced by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also contributed to the improved security.
However, a spate of major blasts since the beginning of the year generated concerns that an attack spree could make a comeback though the U.S. military dismissed the notion that those incidents represent a trend.
The United States urged the Iraqi leaders to cash in on the improved security to give the national reconciliation a strong push.
The lack of security and efficient governance has considerably hindered the reconstruction effort.
Sunni Iraqis, together with the party led by Sadr, and a secular camp headed by former interim government prime minister, dropped out of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government last year, leaving nearly half of the portfolios vacant.
Although some important laws have been passed since January, the United States seems to think the process falls far behind its expectations.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Iraq, said in an interview with Washington Post last Thursday that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.
Source:Xinhua
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