disabled servicemen, with about 40 per cent of troops returning home severely injured.

• A contractor working as a security guard in Iraq earns about $400,000 a year: a typical soldier's annual wages are $40,000.

• Sign-on bonuses, introduced in an effort to recruit more men and women to the war effort, have to be repaid by soldiers who are injured in their first month.

• 1,500 Americans were killed by roadside bombs before Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as US Defence Secretary in 2006 and Humvees were replaced with mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armoured vehicles.

• Because postwar reconstruction jobs went to US firms instead of local Iraqi companies, one painting job cost $25m instead of $5m.

• One American company alone, Halliburton, of which Vice-President Dick Cheney (right) was CEO from 1995 to 2000, has received a total of $19.3bn in single-source contracts for work in Iraq.

• The price of oil has climbed from $25 a barrel to $100 a barrel over the past five years - and a significant proportion of this rise is directly due to the instabilities caused by the Iraq war.

• Before the war, Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, set aside £1bn to pay for Britain's share of the cost; as of late 2007, UK operating costs in Iraq and Afghanistan had already hit £7bn.

• By 2017, the interest alone on America's cost of borrowing to pay for the war will be $1 trillion.

• Because the saving rate in the US is zero, the war has been financed by borrowing abroad. "So China is financing America's war," says Stiglitz.