First released in 2011, the Costs of War report which has been compiled and updated by more than 30 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, political scientists, the United National and other oragnizations was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

According to the report’s findings, more than 70 percent of those who died of direct war violence in Iraq have been civilians — an estimated 134,000 while that number is estimated to be several times higher.

Also, the Iraq war will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers at least $2.2 trillion.-a figure that far exceeds the initial 2002 estimates by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget of $50 to $60 billion.

The report concluded the United States gained little from the war while Iraq was traumatized by it as terrorism in Iraq increased dramatically as a result of the invasion and tactics and fighters were exported to Syria and other neighboring countries.

Iraq has also exhibited a troubling trend towards sectarian conflict and violence, although historically sectarian identity has not been the sole or even the primary foundation for Iraqis’ political identities, the report finds.

In addition, following the US-led invasion, the number of Iraqi women reduced to impoverished widowhood and refugee status skyrocketed.

Iraq’s health care infrastructure remains devastated from sanctions and war as more than half of Iraq’s medical doctors left the country during the 2000s, and tens of thousands of Iraqi patients are forced to seek health care outside the country, the report adds.

Meanwhile, findings show the $60 billion spent on reconstruction for Iraq has not gone to rebuilding infrastructure such as roads, health care, and water treatment systems, but primarily to the military and police while the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has found massive fraud, waste, and abuse of reconstruction funds.

In releasing the report, Lutz said, “The staggering number of deaths in Iraq is hard to fathom, but each of these individuals has to count and be counted.”

“Nearly every government that goes to war underestimates its duration, neglects to tally all the costs, and overestimates the political objectives that will be accomplished by war’s violence,” Crawford said.

The project also assesses claims made as part of the rationale for invading Iraq: increased U.S. security, enhanced democratic governance in Iraq, and improved conditions for Iraqi women.

In 2011 the group released figures for a range of human and economic costs associated with the U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks.

It estimated the total combined costs of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan at $4 trillion and total direct war casualties at minimum oft 330,000 men, women, and children.

The details of the conversation have been kept unknown for nearly a decade, as the two leaders are believed to have discussed whether they should get UN resolution authorizing them to go to war, which in the end they never got.

A panel chaired by tribunal judge Professor John Angel overruled objections form the FCO which had demanded to keep the files related to the conversation secret, saying that allowing any part of the discussion to go public would cause “serious damage” to UK-US relations, The Guardian reported.

Judge John Angel, president of the information tribunal, said Foreign Office witnesses had downplayed the significance of a decision to go to war, a view the tribunal found “difficult to accept”.

“Also in our view, particularly from the evidence in this case, the circumstances surrounding a decision by a UK government to go to war with another country is always likely to be of very significant public interest, even more so with the consequences of this war,” he added according to The Guardian.

Britain and the U.S  had tried to try to win over a majority of members of the Security Council in order to go to war. Then on 10 March, France’s President Jacques Chirac said to French TV that even if there was a majority, France would  veto the resolution.

It was after hearing President Chirac’s remarks that Tony Blair finally gave up the quest for a second UN resolution, a decision he is assumed to have conveyed to President Bush in that 12 March phone call, according to Independent.

The tribunal ordered that an edited version of the note should be released within 30 days.