On March 19, 2008, the beginning of the sixth year of the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq, activists in all 50 states held more than 1,000 protests.

About 100 demonstrators tried to block traffic flow to the IRS building in Washington, DC. 2,500 people marched in the streets of Chicago. Demonstrators shut down recruiting stations from Boston, Massachusetts to Kauai, Hawaii. 150 protestors were arrested in San Francisco for blocking traffic and chaining themselves to public buildings.

All of the March 19 actions were preceded by three days of testimony given by veterans of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Winter Soldier hearings organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War.

As of March 2008, Iraq Body Count has documented between 82,408-89,928 civilian deaths from violence. A study published in British medical journal The Lancet documented over 650,000 Iraqi deaths as of July 2006. More than 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died, and between 40,000 and 60,000 have been wounded in Iraq.

According to The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, a new book released by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, the war in Iraq could end up costing $3 trillion. The authors call their figures conservative.

Some things we could buy for the money we are spending in Iraq annually include universal health care for all those in the U.S. who don’t have it ($100 billion); universal preschool ($35 billion); and immunizations for the world’s children against preventable diseases ($0.6 billion).

Sources: Democracy Now!, Department of Defense, Iraq Body Count, Iraq Veterans Against the War, The Lancet, National Priorities Project, United for Peace and Justice