Much ink has been devoted to the national security rationale behind the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and for good reason. The assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed a growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and that his regime provided meaningful support to al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups, are acknowledged by all but the war’s most die-hard supporters to be untrue. The arguments for invading Iraq that were convincing to so many Americans proved hollow, and it is no surprise that they have been the subject of considerable scrutiny.
Considerably less attention has been paid to pre-war expectations about the war’s outcome. In many ways this is understandable. In contrast to the Bush administration’s repeated declarations about the danger posed by Saddam Hussein during the lead up to war, its statements about the potential human and financial costs were relatively few. Still, the unexpectedly difficult occupation has negatively affected how the American public views the original decision to go to war. In polling of U.S. public opinion dating back to the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, the Washington Post and ABC News have asked, “Considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?” In June 2008, only 34 percent of respondents answered yes; 63 percent stated that the war had not been worth the sacrifices it has entailed.[1] Other opinion polls have produced similar results. With more than four thousand American lives lost in Iraq and the number of wounded estimated to be in the tens of thousands, this sentiment is not surprising. However, it begs the question: what were the prevailing expectations in 2002 and 2003 about how events would unfold once the shooting started? How were those expectations derived, and what role have they played in both the public debate that preceded the war and current public perceptions about the conflict?
The expectations about the likely costs and outcome of a military conflict are an underappreciated aspect of the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, as well as the decision to liberate Kuwait twelve years earlier. While in each case the driving force for military intervention was the President and his administration, the two decisions to go to war with Iraq should also be understood as collective ones involving Members of Congress, opinion leaders, and the general public. Assessing the public’s mood and opinions is a necessarily subjective exercise, especially in the context of foreign policy and national security. Nevertheless, determining whether or not the nation’s interests are best served by armed conflict is a responsibility that is not limited to the executive branch. Public opinion regarding such matters is strongly influenced by expectations about the conflict’s outcome, as well as the human and financial costs involved. This is true when military action is being looked at prospectively, when voters and political leaders must decide whether armed intervention is wise. It is also true that a conflict’s ultimate toll, both in lives and dollars, strongly influences how favorably a past conflict is viewed in hindsight. Conclusions about previous wars inevitably color perceptions and expectations about future national security challenges – not always in ways that are constructive.
Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom merit comparison for a number of reasons. In each case, the U.S. led a coalition of countries in a military confrontation against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. The two presidents who led the U.S. during these conflicts were both Republicans (as well as father and son). In marshaling public support for military intervention, both presidents focused heavily on the heinous nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, his possession or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and the threat he posed to the Middle East region. Importantly, there was no indisputably urgent need for war in either 1990-1991 or 2002-2003. Rather, Americans and their elected representatives had months to consider and debate whether or not to initiate hostilities. In this sense, each conflict may be reasonably described as a “war of choice.”[2] Yet in terms of how they have been regarded by opinion leaders and members of the general public, Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom are quite different from each other.
Operation Desert Storm
In the United States, the five months that preceded Desert Storm were filled with apprehension and uncertainty about the possibility of war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi control. Concerns about the costs and outcome of war with Iraq were pervasive among American elites and the general public. In 1990, the shadow of Vietnam loomed large in the American psyche. Nearly 60,000 American lives had been lost in a losing effort that lasted more than twice as long as World War Two. Although the U.S. had used armed force on several occasions in the intervening years, most notably in Panama in 1989, none of those instances were close in size or scope to the more than 400,000 U.S. military personnel that had deployed to the Persian Gulf by January 1991. For Americans contemplating going to war with Iraq, Vietnam was the main point of reference, and it was not a reassuring one. President George H. W. Bush even felt compelled to address fears that war with Iraq could prove to be a Vietnam-like quagmire. Six weeks before the January 15 deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait established by the U.N. Security Council, he stated, "Let me assure you, should military action be required, this will not be another Vietnam. This will not be a protracted, drawn-out war."[3]
While the memory of Vietnam colored public perceptions in a very broad sense, concerns also focused on the specific challenges associated with evicting Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait. To be sure, few informed observers doubted that the U.S.-led coalition of nearly half a million troops would ultimately defeat Iraqi forces in the event of war. The U.S. military was acknowledged to be the most technologically advanced in the world, and its all-volunteer composition meant that it was a much more professional force than it had been two decades earlier. Still, today’s widely accepted view of unchallenged U.S. dominance in conventional warfare was, at best, a matter of speculation in 1990. The Pentagon’s high tech weapons systems were largely untested in battle,[4] and the overwhelming majority of U.S. military personnel had never been in combat. (Of the veterans who were still in uniform, none had ever experienced desert warfare.) The allied coalition would be facing an estimated 580,000 Iraqi troops deployed in and around Kuwait, many of whom were veterans of the Iran-Iraq war.[5] Moreover, Iraqi forces had used the months following their invasion of Kuwait to fortify their positions, and they would be fighting on familiar terrain in the event of a conflict with the U.S. and its allies.
In this context, the potential costs of a war to liberate Kuwait were difficult to assess. Speculation abounded among military experts, journalists, and Members of Congress as to the number of casualties that could be expected, but there was little in the way of consensus. Unsurprisingly, Pentagon and Bush Administration officials refused to discuss internal government assessments about this matter. Most observers who ventured estimates of U.S. casualties offered a range of possible outcomes, often in the form of “best case” and “worst case” scenarios. Some were quite prescient in suggesting that American losses could be relatively low. Rep. Les Aspin (D-WI), then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, stated in January 1991 that the U.S. was likely to suffer casualties numbering between 3,000 and 5,000, including 500 to 1,000 deaths, in a conflict lasting roughly one month.[6] British military historian John Keegan also indicated that he expected a war with Iraq to be quick and decisive, with coalition forces experiencing relatively few losses.[7] Perhaps most striking (at least in retrospect) was the prediction by former Egyptian defense minister Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala, who had previously worked closely with Iraq’s military commanders, that U.S. and allied casualties would total no more than a few hundred.[8]
Grimmer predictions were far more common, however. In late October, for instance, Newsweek told readers that the first ten days of ground combat could see 5,000 Americans killed and 15,000 more wounded.[9] The Boston Globe reported in December that military experts believed U.S. casualties could reach 45,000, including 10,000 dead.[10] Veteran military correspondent Joseph Galloway wrote in U.S. News and World Report that “U.S. commanders are preparing for a war that could take months, not weeks, and could produce a level of casualties America has not seen since Korea.”[11]
Nor were such speculations limited to journalists. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski cautioned that U.S. forces would face “an Iraqi Army that is battle-tested and experienced in defensive fighting,” and that a war would likely result in “thousands of deaths among American servicemen.”[12] Edward Luttwak, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in the Washington Post that projections of 30,000 U.S. casualties – with 10,000 killed – were realistic given the large number of troops deployed to the region.[13] Other experts avoided mention of specific numbers but nonetheless expressed considerable concern about the cost in American lives. Henry Kissinger, for instance, acknowledged that while war might prove necessary to evict Iraq from Kuwait, “Ground combat involving heavy casualties against an enemy tempered by the experience of an eight-year defensive war of attrition with Iran should be an absolutely last resort.”[14] Even former (and future) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, an eager proponent of U.S. air strikes on behalf of Kuwait, stated that he was “not terribly enamored” with the notion of a ground assault to liberate the sheikdom.[15]
While most Americans were sympathetic to the President’s view that Iraq’s aggression was intolerable, there was considerable unease about the thousands of American casualties that many were forecasting. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken one week before the January 15 deadline, 63 percent of respondents expressed support for war if Iraq refused to withdraw from Kuwait, while 32 percent expressed opposition. However, when asked if they favored U.S. intervention “if it meant 1,000 American troops would be killed in the fighting,” only 44 percent said yes while 53 percent said no.[16] The public’s doubts as to whether the liberation of Kuwait would be worth the cost were shared by many elected officials. When the U.S. Congress voted in early January to authorize military action, it did so by the slimmest margin since the War of 1812: the House of Representatives approved the resolution 250-183, and the Senate gave its consent with a vote of 52-47.[17]
The outcome of Desert Storm bore little resemblance to the dire predictions that had been put forth over the previous five months. After a six week air campaign against Iraq, U.S. and allied ground forces routed their Iraqi opponents and liberated Kuwait in just four days of fighting. U.S. combat deaths came to a total of 147.[18] Support for President Bush’s handling of the crisis over Kuwait soared, and Members of Congress who had voted against authorizing the use of force scrambled to explain their earlier opposition. After Iraq capitulated at the end of February, polling indicated that 86 percent of Americans believed Desert Storm had been worth fighting.[19]
In some respects, it should be no surprise that Americans held such favorable views of a conflict that ended in a conclusive U.S. triumph. But the war’s overwhelming popularity after the fact was surely based on more than the simple act of winning. After all, Americans’ post-war views of both the Spanish-American War and World War I were notably ambivalent, despite the fact that the nation had been outright victors in both conflicts. While there is no way to say for certain, it seems likely that the stark disparity between the gloomy pre-war expectations about U.S. casualties and the modest losses that actually occurred during Desert Storm fueled the public’s post-war enthusiasm. Moreover, the war’s outcome went a long way in recasting the public’s perceptions about the likely costs of future military campaigns; the backdrop for U.S. national security policy was no longer the Vietnam conflict but the “100 Hour War.” Tellingly, the main criticism of Desert Storm over the decade that followed was that the U.S.-led coalition had not seized the opportunity to march on Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from power. The costs and difficulties associated with such a move received relatively little attention.
Operation Iraqi Freedom
For a number of reasons, the prelude to the 2003 invasion of Iraq was very different from its Desert Storm counterpart. When the Bush administration began making its case for war in the late summer of 2002, less than a year had elapsed since the al-Qaeda hijackings killed nearly 3,000 people. No credible evidence indicated that Saddam Hussein was at all connected with the attacks, but Bush administration officials actively worked to portray regime change in Iraq as part of the “global war on terror.” While the validity of this assertion was questionable at best, there was no denying the fact that September 11 had fundamentally altered the debate about Iraq. Whereas in 1990-1991 Saddam Hussein was understood to be a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East, his presumed arsenal of chemical and biological weapons was now viewed as a threat to American lives on American soil. In this context, concerns about the costs and outcome of war were much less at the forefront of public debate than had been the case during the debate that preceded Desert Storm. Instead, the focus was on the gravity of the threat and how it should be neutralized.
Nonetheless, in view of the public’s current disillusionment regarding the war’s costs, it is worth reexamining the pre-war debate about the war’s outcome and the sacrifices it could entail. In contrast to the months preceding Desert Storm, public discussion about U.S. casualties was vague and cursory. News articles were as likely to discuss minimizing Iraqi civilian casualties as they were U.S. losses. The scenarios proffered by journalists and military experts with concrete forecasts about U.S. casualties that proliferated in late 1990 were nowhere to be found twelve years later. By the time Bush administration began making its case for war in the late summer of 2002, there was no longer any question about the supremacy of the U.S. armed forces in conventional combat. It had been clearly demonstrated by Desert Storm in 1991, as well as NATO’s successful air campaign against Serbia in 1999 with no allied combat fatalities. After September 11, many historians, military experts and journalists warned that a U.S. intervention in Afghanistan would face the same perils that had bled the Red Army for a decade and claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Soviet soldiers during the 1980s. By December 2001, however, the U.S. had driven the Taliban from power with a combination of air strikes and a Special Forces units working with the Northern Alliance. By the end of 2002, the number of American lives lost in Afghanistan to hostile action was 61.[20]
These military successes added further to the changes in American expectations about casualties that had begun with Desert Storm, and the surging confidence in U.S. military power underlay the debate about Iraq that followed. As Brookings Institute scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Philip Gordon noted in a New York Times editorial, “Most advocates of overthrowing the Iraqi regime have tended to minimize the attendant costs. For them, the rapid fall of the Taliban seemed to mark the arrival of a new form of warfare requiring only small numbers of American ground forces and promising decisive results at little cost.”[21] While few said it openly, there was a palpable sense among many that invading Iraq would be low-cost, high-impact affair. Dr. Anthony Cordesman, a highly respected military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was so alarmed by this pervasive confidence among war supporters that he addressed it directly in his opening testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July 2002:
Iraq might be a far easier opponent than its force strengths indicate. But it also is potentially a very serious military opponent indeed. And to be perfectly blunt, I think only fools would bet the lives of other men's sons and daughters on their own arrogance and call this force a cake walk or a speed bump or something that you can dismiss.[22]
While relatively few on either side of the pre-war debate argued that defeating Saddam Hussein’s regime would be too difficult or costly for the U.S. military, many opponents of the war, as well as those urging caution, expressed concern about what would follow. In a report released shortly before the invasion commenced, the Council on Foreign Relations presciently argued that “many Iraqi civilians will be at serious risk if U.S. troops do not maintain a substantial ground presence and a public security focus in areas under U.S. and coalition control, and in areas simply abandoned by Iraqi forces.”[23] But proponents of the war pointed to reasons to be optimistic about post-war Iraq. While Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion that U.S. forces would be “greeted as liberators,” is well known, many more sober-minded individuals were also cautiously hopeful about a post-Saddam Iraq. One important factor behind this optimism was the situation in Afghanistan. After the rapid defeat of the Taliban at the end of 2001, the United Nations convened a meeting with representatives of the country’s disparate factions, and in relatively short order an agreement was reached for establishing an interim Afghan government that would pave the way for democratic elections. The fact that a post-war framework was reached so quickly in an impoverished country – one that had been plagued by conflict for more than two decades – led many observers to believe that achieving a stable, democratic government in post-Saddam Iraq would not be the enormous challenge that some were predicting. While there were signs in the fall of 2002 that Afghanistan continued to face many challenges, it was widely believed that the country was more or less on the right path. Moreover, war proponents pointed to the Afghanistan example as evidence that once Iraq had been liberated, the international community would inevitably step forward with peacekeepers, advisors, and funding, thereby relieving the U.S. of much of the burden for post-war reconstruction.
In addition, many argued that Iraq possessed many assets that would enable it to flourish after Saddam’s regime was ousted. In addition to possessing significant oil reserves, Iraq was a relatively well-educated country with a skilled labor force. Before the invasion of Kuwait and the economic sanctions that followed, it had been a prosperous country. In contrast to those who warned that a host of difficult nation-building tasks awaited, war proponents contended that Iraq’s latent strengths would allow it to flourish once Saddam were removed. In October 2002, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius actually pointed to Saddam’s authoritarian rule over Iraq as reason to be optimistic about its post-war prognosis:
Many analysts warn of the disasters that await in this postwar Iraq, but frankly I'm not convinced. . . In truth, Iraq is probably more ready for democracy than any nation in the Arab world. That's partly because its people have suffered so much from the cruelty of the current regime. But it's also because the Iraqis are the most likely Arabs to build a truly modern nation. For centuries, Baghdad has been a center of learning, and the Iraqis gained a reputation as the Prussians of the Arab world.[24]
Other opinion leaders agreed that the benefits of a successful U.S. intervention could be quite substantial. In a staff editorial endorsing a U.S.-led invasion, the Washington Post acknowledged that while a post-Saddam Iraq would pose many challenges for U.S. policymakers, “if the goal of preserving a unified Iraq under the administration of a democratic regime were achieved, it could give decisive impetus to nascent movements for reform that exist throughout the Middle East.”[25]
What is most striking about the 2002-2003 debate is that virtually no one warned against the possibility of a prolonged insurgency. Much criticism has been rightly directed at the Bush administration for not planning adequately for post-war Iraq. However, it is noteworthy that the failure to foresee even the possibility of an insurgency against occupation forces was nearly universal. From July 2002 through March 2003, the four Congressional committees[26] responsible for U.S. foreign policy and military affairs matters received testimony about U.S. policy toward Iraq from nearly three dozen independent experts, including such respected individuals as Dr. Phebe Marr of the National Defense University and former CENTCOM commander General Anthony Zinni. Not one of them expressed concern that the U.S. could face an extended military campaign against guerrilla forces following the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime. Other independent sources overlooked this possibility as well. The aforementioned Council on Foreign Relations report, for example, made no mention of the potential for protracted irregular combat directed against U.S. forces. Media reports on the pending invasion were similarly silent on this danger.
During the lead-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, support for invading Iraq was fairly robust. A CBS News poll taken shortly before the invasion found that 69 percent of the public supported using armed force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In contrast to Desert Storm, Congress decisively approved the use of military force against Iraq, with the authorizing resolution passing 296-133 in the House of Representatives and 77-23 in the Senate.[27] The success of Bush’s Republican Party in the midterm Congressional elections a few weeks later was further indication that the American electorate was supportive of armed intervention.[28] But there was also an often unstated view that U.S. losses would likely be on the scale to which Americans had grown accustomed over the previous twelve years. As the New York Times noted in a staff editorial three weeks before the invasion commenced, “For most people, the vision of a new gulf war is one of relatively quick victory, not years of American occupation.”[29]
It should be noted that expectation of a relatively rapid, low-casualty victory proved correct, at least in terms of achieving Saddam Hussein’s removal from power. When President Bush made his now infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, U.S. combat fatalities totaled 103.[30] But the violence against the liberating forces never really ceased. Even after Saddam’s capture in December 2003, the situation in Iraq continued to worsen, with U.S. fatalities climbing to 500 the following month. Since the end of 2004, opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe the war has not been worth the costs.[31]
Conclusion
The American public’s willingness to go to war, and the circumstances necessary for sustaining public support for an ongoing military conflict, have been the subject of considerable debate among academics, political leaders, and journalists. The role of pre-war expectations of a conflict’s costs and outcome is often overlooked in these discussions. During the fall of 1990, support for confronting Iraq’s aggression was tempered by widespread anxiety about the sacrifices it would require. In contrast, the prelude to Operation Iraqi Freedom featured dramatically less discussion of potential U.S. casualties and stronger (though not universal) support for going to war. Yet the prevailing view of Desert Storm holds that it was a brilliant military victory, while most Americans appear to regret the 2003 invasion. What are we to make of these two wars, the pre-war expectations about their costs and the public’s perceptions of them in retrospect?
The history of these two conflicts, the pre-war expectations about their costs, and the public’s perceptions of them in retrospect suggest several questions worth considering for the future. First, to what extent do expectations about casualties, duration, and outcome ultimately influence the willingness of Members of Congress and the general public to support taking military action? What causes the issue of U.S. casualties to be at the forefront of some national security debates and not others?
Second, when it comes to the nation’s retrospective evaluation of a war of choice, how important is the accuracy or inaccuracy of pre-war perceptions regarding its cost and outcome? For instance, if the content of the 2002-2003 debate had prepared Americans for the possibility of a long guerrilla campaign (and the public still supported invading), would the nation’s support for the war have proven more durable in the face of sustained violence against U.S. forces? And how much does the accuracy or inaccuracy of cost expectations in one conflict influence the development and acceptance of similar forecasts down the road? For example, did the dramatic overestimation of U.S. losses before Desert Storm predispose public elites and ordinary citizens to underestimate the challenges associated with regime change twelve years later?
Third, are there ways to improve the accuracy of cost estimations in advance of conflicts so as to better inform the nation’s collective judgement? It is true that a few people correctly predicted a crushing allied victory before Desert Storm, and a great many people wisely cautioned that post-Saddam Iraq could prove extremely challenging. But most of the pre-Desert Storm discussion presumed a bloody slugfest in the liberation of Kuwait, and virtually no one anticipated prolonged irregular warfare after Saddam Hussein had been ousted. In terms of what are arguably the two most defining characteristics of these two conflicts, the pre-war expectations were – to borrow a phrase from Paul Wolfowitz – wildly off the mark.
It is unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to accurately foretell the cost, duration, and outcome of any armed conflict, particularly before the first shot has been fired. War is inherently complex and unpredictable; uncertainty is one of its most defining characteristics. Still, when military intervention is being contemplated, few would argue that assessing the risks and potential costs should not be part of the calculus. Events such as the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, where the threat to the nation is unambiguous and war is the only conceivable response, have been exceedingly rare in U.S. history. The use of military force has usually involved at least some degree of discretion, and there is little reason to believe that this will change in the foreseeable future.
1 The results of the Washington Post/ABC News Poll, as well as archived data collected in its earlier polling, are available on the Washington Post’s website at the following address:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/postpoll_061608.html?sid=ST2008061700079
Subsequent references to this polling data will be noted as “Washington Post/ABC News Poll.”
2 There appears to be little consensus as what constitutes a “war of choice.” The term has been used by critics to describe Operation Iraqi Freedom, while many of the war’s defenders contend that virtually every conflict represents a war of choice. Both arguments have some validity. For the purposes of this paper, the salient point is that both wars with Iraq were initiated essentially at the discretion of the U.S. following months of public deliberation.
6 Gordon, Michael. “Aspin Sees Air Strikes Leading to a Quick Victory.” New York Times 9 Jan. 1991: A1.
7 Smith, Colin. “Gulf (The Eleventh Hour): Saddam's army will crack.” The Observer 13 June 1991: 15.
10 Nickerson, Colin. “US military medical crews prepare for war's casualties.” Boston Globe 25 Dec.1990: 1.
12 Brzezinski, Zbigniew. “Patience in the Persian Gulf, Not War.” New York Times 7 Oct. 1990: Section 4, p. 19.
13 Luttwak, Edward. “Two Perilous Scenarios; Both U.S. Ground-War Plans Would Entail Enormous Risks and Casualties.” Washington Post 11 Nov. 1990: Outlook, p. B2.
15 Gordon, Michael. “Mideast Tensions; Ex-Defense Secretaries Advise Patience in Gulf.” New York Times 3 Dec. 1990: p.14.
16 Germond, Jack W. and Jules Witcover. “Poll indicates public's support for war is fragile.” St. Petersburg Times (Florida) 11 Jan. 1991: p. 20A. Support for war dropped to 35 percent if it entailed 10,000 U.S. deaths, while opposition rose to 61 percent.
17 Hanson, Christopher. “Americans are deeply divided over Gulf war; Polls show public support would plummet as casualties mount.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer 14 Jan. 1991: p. A4.
[18] United States. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Fact Sheet: America's Wars. May 2008.
[19] Washington Post/ABC News Poll.
[20] iCasualties.org: Operation Enduring Freedom. https://www.icasualties.org/oef/.
[21] Gordon, Philip H. and Michael O’Hanlon. “Is Fighting Iraq Worth the Risks?” New York Times 25 July 2002: p. 17.
[22] Hearings to Examine Threats, Responses, and Regional Considerations Surrounding Iraq. 107th Cong., 1st sess., 31 July - 1 August 2002. Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 2002.
[23] “Iraq: The Day After.” March 2003. Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Iraq_DayAfter_TF.pdf, p. 10.
[24] Ignatius, David. “Possibilities of a New Iraq.” Washington Post 6 Oct. 2002: p. B07. Ignatius is a former Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.
[25] “The Case For Action.” Washington Post 5 Feb. 2003: p. A22.
[26] The four committees include the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House International Relations Committee, and the House Armed Services Committee.
[27] For the vote on H.J.Res. 114 in the U.S. House of Representatives, see https://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/107/house/2/votes/455/. For the U.S. Senate, see https://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/107/senate/2/votes/237/.
[28] In 2002, Republicans strengthened their majority in the House of Representatives with a net gain of eight seats. The GOP regained control of the Senate with the addition of two new Republican Senators.
[29] “President Bush's Nation-Building.” New York Times 27 Feb. 2003: p. 30.
[30] iCasualties.org: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. https://icasualties.org/oif/.
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