Eight days after the invasion of Iraq on March 19 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defence secretary and a leading proponent of the war, told a Congressional committee: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
A decade later, that assessment could hardly have turned out to be more wrong. The US has overwhelmingly borne the brunt of both the military and reconstruction costs, spending at least $138bn on private security, logistics and reconstruction contractors, who have supplied everything from diplomatic security to power plants and toilet paper.
An analysis by the Financial Times reveals the extent to which both American and foreign companies have profited from the conflict – with the top 10 contractors securing business worth at least $72bn between them.