ten years ago today the u.s. invasion of iraq began a decade after the war started what did the u.s. learn during their time in the country and was the war worth it. in a decade later the way the u.s. fights conflicts around the globe has changed dramatically we'll look at the evolving techniques the pentagon uses to wage war around the world. and the un is coming down on the u.s. for their drone attacks on pakistan we'll have a report from new york on what the united nations says about the drone strikes and why it violates pakistan's sovereignty. it's tuesday march nineteenth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well ten years ago today the united states invaded iraq and on this anniversary about

a dozen car bombs and suicide blast killed at least fifty people a deadly reminder that iraq remains a dangerous and unstable country when the bush administration launched this war there was no indication the war would last this long claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and cost as much as it has are to correspond mega lopez takes a look at the promises the bush administration made versus the way it actually played out. my fellow citizens at this hour american and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm iraq to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. a speech that laid the groundwork for years of war and strife the iraq war was described as a necessary war one that would ensure the stability of that region and the world's numerous human sources tell us that iraqis are moving not just documents and hard

drives but weapons of mass destruction to keep them from being found by inspectors we know they have weapons of mass destruction we know they have active programs there is there isn't any debate about how. the u.s. promised to unseat a rogue leader find in obtain all weapons of mass destruction and rebuild a broken nation ten years later only one of those promises was kept a war to end the alleged deceptions of saddam hussein's regime muddied the reputation of the world's most powerful nation the iraq war was supposed to be a lot of things cost effective for one office of management and budget estimated it would be something under fifty billion dollars how that side estimates say up to three hundred billion baloney but there is more meat to that argument than economists and the bush administration thought the latest estimates put the total cost of the iraq war at eight hundred twenty three billion dollars with reconstruction efforts in the country totaling over three hundred billion but it

wasn't only the financial costs the bush administration underestimated it was also the human toll some of the higher end predictions that we have been hearing recently such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand u.s. troops to provide stability in post saddam and iraq are wildly off the mark a decade later with four thousand four hundred eighty four american military personnel dead more than thirty two thousand fish. injured and tens of thousands of other suffering the mental impacts of the iraq war those predictions proved to be right on point as for the damage this war caused the iraqi and american people do you think the american people are prepared for a long costly and bloody battle with a significant american casualties i don't i don't think it's likely won't fall that way too because i really do believe we will be greeted as liberators anywhere from one hundred twenty five thousand to one million iraqis died the u.s. went into recession that cost millions of families their jobs and homes and the

notion of a noble nation riding in on white stallions to liberate a depressed people turned out to be smoke and mirrors so ten years later with the iraq war behind us did the us earn anything from this unpopular war we see that iraq changed washington as much as what. you see how much there is concern you see the day you see it you see the risk of being involved now in syria and elsewhere in the woods you see the conservative party over the course over the phone but in general is much more we if nothing else the bush administration said was true about the war in iraq perhaps as official declaration of war was a prelude to what was really to come a campaign on the harsh terrain of a nation as large as california could be longer and more difficult than some predict. however not even president bush could predict how long or how expensive this war would really be. in washington meghan lopez r.t.

. ten years later hundreds of thousands of lives trillions of dollars spent what is the state of iraq today to discuss i'd like to bring in the panel from california i'm joined by former alaskan senator mike gravel and in new york sara flounders co-director of the international action center she's also the author of the book you see there war without victory. welcome to the both of you so senator i want to start with you was it worth it not only was it worth it it was a criminal act i mean if we adhere to the nuremberg principles united states committed a criminal act we know who the criminals are and for some reason we don't prosecute them is really something wrong with our national morality now sara what do you think are we better off today than we were ten years ago and is iraq better off.

iraq is much worse off and i this was a horrendous crime against humanity against of people of iraq the total destruction of iraq which had the highest literacy in the region and today the lowest the destruction of health care of the standard of living on every measure of a quarter of the iraqi people today dead disabled or dislocated millions of refugees that is a crime and yet it was also a complete failure for us strategic interests a howling blunder on every count and these criminals who launched this war based on total lies they should be prosecuted no when saddam hussein was toppled some back of that and still today say that saddam hussein was a dictator that systematically tortured and killed his own people and those that defend the war in iraq say the world is safer and better off without senator what

do you say to them. it's foolishness saddam hussein was a thug there's no question about that he killed a lot of his own people but he was not a threat to the united states and he was not a threat to the world this was part of a neo con play in the far conservatives who wanted to one develop american her germany across the world starting with it rock afghanistan libya now syria and we're repeating this same lead up to a war with iran and it's being led by none other than the president of united states who who felt we don't look back so we don't prosecute the criminals and now we're about to repeat the same thing over again when the president says that that we can do anything we want with iran and everything's on the table most americans don't realize that there's

a doctrine was in the presidency the white house that the president can launch a nuclear war on his own decision without the congress without anybody else he has that kind of power and it's been stated so. and you know i here are during this anniversary and a lot of times we see these things in retrospect i want to take a look at the newspaper headlines ten years ago today when the war was started the first one there is from the chicago sun times that's war bush opens with surgical strikes at iraqi leaders from kinetic at air strikes target hussein bush describes actions as opening stages of a broader and concentrated campaign to free the iraqi people and another cover there in north carolina missiles of rain from north carolina that's as missiles rain on defiant saddam so i want to ask you sara did the media give the invasion more credibility. well the invasion the

shock and awe was really on every standard terror terror against a whole population an effort to create a total collapse the very fact that it failed that is an important lesson for the people of the whole world but today is also the second anniversary of the us nato war that destroyed libya this week it's a second anniversary of the war for regime change to destabilize syria the drone attacks that take place every single day against pakistan and a whole number of other countries caesar all assaults on the sovereignty of countries around the world and it's a crime that is continuing and the emboldened us was actually emboldened that they staged a war that was clearly criminal by its very nature and no one here was charged for it so that aggressive appetite in different form in libya different form in syria

new threats on iran but very very dangerous for the people of the world and the people right here in the u.s. and we should take note along with a terrible destruction for the iraqi people the the exposé this week of the u.s. role in torture in the death squads in the civil war openly from mentoring it these are the kind of crimes that were committed and that that there should really be a responsibility for today and the crimes continue in another way to forty percent of the more than one million u.s. soldiers who served in iraq today suffer from post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injuries that's a horrendous toll right there the cost of the war over two trillion dollars when medical care and long term care are considered so we're paying an enormous. mt and

the people of the world are paying highly for these criminal wars yeah we're seeing the human cost and the enormous financial cost senator here we are ten years later do you think that there should have been more alarm alarm bells before invading should we have heard more cautionary critical voices whether it be from government officials or from the media well our entire institutions the media the congress the white house all failed the american people and the american people themselves are not free from culpability in this regard because when when we saw this violation this invasion of another country as a criminal act it didn't take long that was within a year you knew that it would this was a criminal act the american public did not react to that the american media right now which which marginalizes any thought of a serious investigation of nine eleven which triggered this and hire situation for

the neo cons to be able to pursue america and her germany in the world matched with our physical power and our control of energy around the world is where what are americans doing you know those little cliche in that is if you kill one person it's murder if you kill a million well that's foreign policy that's exactly the way we act there's a gap between american more ality as individuals and between them or reality of the nation as a whole and we don't seem to react to that and that makes us culpable as americans into crimes that we see we just have a minute left i want to ask you i guess after all this what lessons have we learned none well i think we learned never to. so good senators saying that in their lives sarah what do you think what lessons have we have we learned hopefully one or

a couple something have we learned anything from all of this never never to trust the corporate media which is actually aligned with the banks sea oil corporations to military corporations in this country and to ally on mobilizing the people themselves millions of people opposed the u.s. war in iraq in huge demonstrations worldwide in the us literally millions thousands and thousands of actions were organized i was very much part of that ten years ago and still continuing to this day we need to do that much more forcefully we can't accept this and we have to resist it and we also have to resist the lies of the u.s. corporate media that is really a public relations arm for these wars and are a appreciate you both very much for coming on and your insightful remarks on this on the ten year anniversary of the war in iraq that was former alaskan senator mike gravel and sara flounders co-director of the international action center. on this day ten years ago president bush announced to the american people that we're going

to war and since then there's been several memorable an infamous moments from the toppling of saddam statue to president bush declaring mission accomplished to american flags draped over the coffins of dead soldiers we are going to take a look now at a timeline of a decade in iraq. the united nations security council. has not lived up to its responsibilities. so we will rock. you reckon ten years to find a charge to levy toward america and to support terror. they're nothing but a bunch of cold blooded killers and that's the way we're going to treat them the gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that grants weapons of mass destruction posed to the world. the iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons weapons of mass destruction weapons of mass destruction weapons of mass and there.

i my fellow americans. major combat operations in iraq have ended in the battle of iraq the united states and our allies have prevailed. we see jubal iraqis rolling up in stunning fingers and celebrating their freedom these images of liberty have been spared us. by august thirty first two thousand and ten. our combat mission in iraq will.

go on. right ok as promised the rest of our troops in iraq will come home by the end of the year. after nearly nine years. america's war in iraq will be over. such. as day that we reflect on the war in iraq we want to examine the economic impact of this very costly conflict r.c. laurie harshness joins us now to land hi there laurie so this war cost several lives but also an enormous amount of money what kind of an economic impact has the war had. sure well if you're someone that profits off of war it's had a very positive impact but for the rest of us it's been pretty catastrophic

conservative estimates have it at over seven hundred billion dollars and some estimates have it. in the trillions but either way you slice it that comes out to more than two hundred dollars two hundred million dollars a day which is out of control for ten years every single day two hundred million dollars so it's not the biggest ticket item on our credit card bill right now but it's pretty catastrophic an incredible amount of money and we know that a billion dr this report came out billions of dollars have gone toward rebuilding iraq but. as we know on the ground there's a lot of these projects have gone unfinished and the country is still in shambles so i mean i guess what happened to the billions that were supposed to go toward reconstruction well. over one hundred million went to rebuilding a oil pipeline of course because oil and we actually destroyed the pipeline when we

went to invaded and then we spent over a billion dollars trying to build and rebuild and reconstruct a pipeline of our own there. being this huge long project we spent over forty billion or million in rather a prison that just the rubble that we never bothered completing we spent million dollars and kickbacks and other fraudulent activities that resulted in criminal charges and convictions so you know the bottom line is two hundred million dollars a day where does the money go who knows but it certainly didn't go to we the taxpayers and it certainly didn't have the iraqi people gloria i know that we have an all new resident to look forward to later tonight a whole new style a whole new format give us a little bit of a preview. for four years now for r.t. i've been going into times square asking people from around the world for their opinions on world events and my you so the president on r.t.e.

it's i finally get to talk about my own opinions and i'm very excited because i'm very opinionated. that much is true of various folk and looking forward to it there laurie. and as host of the resident well from the initial ground invasion to a more more covert war fought by unmanned aircraft the face of the iraq war has evolved over a decade to correspond to margaret howell takes a look now at how tactics have changed since you rock. since the iraq invasion u.s. military tactics have switched from boots on the ground to robots in the air the cia and pentagon's first drone strike occurred in yemen in two thousand and two and sense then we've ratcheted up our drone activity under this administration the pentagon spending of unmanned aircraft has jumped from two hundred eighty four million in two thousand to nearly four billion last year the number of drones owned by the pentagon rocketed from less than two hundred two thousand two to seventy five hundred now while the bulk of these drones are small shoulder launched ravens

heavily armed predators and reapers are also use having accumulated one million hours of combat patrols in the skies over afghanistan and iraq insurgents don't have the ability to shoot them down and they're controlled remotely so even if they crash american soldiers. this makes them quite popular for the u.s. drones provide twenty four hour patrols over hot spots and gather intelligence by pulling in millions of terabytes of data and hours of video feeds. right now predator and reaper drones are completing fifty nine twenty four hour combat air controllers per day mostly in afghanistan and pakistan the standing order is for the air force to increase the number to sixty five a day by may of twenty fourteen the staffing demands the military drone use has dramatically increased we now require nearly seven hundred drone pilots and twelve hundred sensory operators to keep up with the u.s. drone activity. general mike hostage commander of air force combat command said

that the current number of drones patrolling the skies over seas may already be more than the service can afford to maintain hell over the air force discussions are focused more on whether the military drones fleet is the right size and composition for future conflicts this is been an insatiable appetite within the military for unmanned hunter killer drones particularly amid top combat commanders around the world let's face it killing by remote control is quite popular. drone warfare work for the u.s. while we own the field of aerial strikes now other countries are catching up with us we'll see just how popular the u.s. drone policy remains amid new laws that require clearance for sovereign air spaces in washington margaret howell r.t. . my conversation about the drone secret drone war overseas has heated up after senator rand paul's epic filibuster but he's not the only critic of america's drone campaign now the highest international official is speaking out against it the u.n.

special reportorial on human rights and counterterrorism is calling the drone campaign in pakistan a violation of the country's sovereignty are to correspond poor and i am joined now from new york for more of a marina so what exactly did this u.n. officials say about the u.s. drone program well the un special rapporteur ben emmerson did say as you already mentioned that you that the united states on going drone campaign in pakistan is a violation of the south asians nation's sovereignty and it is being conducted without the consent of pakistan's elected representatives or of the legitimate government mr emerson went on to say that islam abides has been condemning the use of drones over its territory and mr emerson also urge an end to what he described as quote forcible military interference now the u.n. independent expert said that it's time for the international community to heed the concerns of of pakistan and give the next democrat democratically elected

government the support it needs to deliver a lasting peace without any outside military interference and that was a reference to the u.s. drone campaign in pakistan now emerson's comments were released in a statement at the end of his three day visit to pakistan last week during his visit he inspected the impact of drone warfare on the local civilian population and it was back in january when emerson announced that he would be investigating twenty five drone strikes that have taken place in areas such as pakistan yemen somalia afghanistan and the palestinian territories mr everson is scheduled to present his final report to the united nations general assembly in october so this is just one of many statements that he. expected to be making as his investigation into drone strikes continues throughout the year and this is the strongest statement from an international group yet in opposition opposition to the u. the u.s.

drone drone program what is the significance of this well i mean it's profoundly significant because first and foremost we've been hearing consistent criticism about america's drone campaign that's gone global and the statements coming from operator emerson's were quite profound in addition to whatever any mentioned the independent u.n. expert said that if drone strikes continue into the next pakistani government the u.s. could further destabilize pakistan which is a nuclear power and it undermines a key u.s. strategic goal at the allegedly at the heart of america's drone program but we should mention that special rapper tours like mr emerson are appointed by the u.n. human rights council to examine and report back on situations or specific human rights themes their positions are honorary and experts don't have any legal or binding authority but nonetheless these types of statements coming from an independent u.n. expert especially when they're critical of the u.s.

is is quite symbolic to say the least and it adds liz as you mentioned another layer to the criticism that's already been delivered for the past weeks and months over america's drone program i guess the question now is it now that he's made this proclamation oh we'll. might scale back its drone missions in pakistan as a result of this announcement or what can come of this statement from the u.n. well as i mentioned are opportunists and released his statement at the end of last week now after that this state department spokeswoman victoria nuland again knowledge that the pentagon the pentagon officials have seen emerson's statements his press release but she refused to speak about what she called classified information nuland insisted that washington has a strong ongoing counter-terrorism dialogue with islam a body and that will continue so clearly not

a lot of reaction coming from washington about these quite critical statements of america's drone program in pakistan but they haven't been you know very forthcoming or transparent about their drone program from the very beginning so it's quite unlikely that they're going to respond to such severe criticism coming from a u.n. droplets who are investigating the effects of drone warfare throughout the world thanks for keeping us updated that was our to correspondent. on obvious benefit of drones for the military is that it keeps u.s. soldiers out of harm's way one tactic used by the iraqi insurgency are improvised explosive devices or. and i believe that we have some video of this of these weapons that have been used by the insurgency over the years in iraq.

these are the fascinating images of the homemade weapons blowing up they are designed to detonate when a vehicle drives over them they're typically place on the ground inside animal carcasses soft drink cans or boxes by the end of two thousand and seven the weapons of war are responsible for sixty four percent of coalition deaths in iraq may of that year was the deadliest month by with the tactic killing eighty nine coalition forces and while the bombs claimed thousands of lives death by i do appear to decrease dramatically after two thousand and seven and we're going to leave it out there but from one of the stories we cover check out our you tube channel youtube dot com slash r t america and follow me on twitter out as well will be right back here in a half hour. technology

innovation and all the developments around. the future of. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you don't know i'm charged welcome to the big picture. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world

has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are today. a clear image of iraq after inflation a. twenty day taxi trip through the country. the roads full of dangerous. clear evidence from north to south. the route of iraqi tragedy. after the war waiting for peace. talks see. the morrow.