More than half a million people have been killed in the U.S.-led Iraq War 20 years ago, according to an estimate by Brown University’s Watson Institute (*).

The United States began the military invasion under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and continues to attack the country militarily 20 years later.

The war began with bombings on March 19, 2003. U.S. troops left Iraq in 2011, nine years later, to trigger the Arab Spring.

But the evacuation was purely formal. It moved its bases to Syria, from where it conducts major military operations to this day.

Thousands of people – from Iraqi troops and police to U.S. and other allied fighters – have been killed and wounded. If civilians in Iraq (since the U.S. invasion in 2003) and Syria (since 2014) are added together, the death toll ranges from 550,000 to 580,000.

That death toll…