The bill to the British taxpayer for military operations in Iraq is more than £6 billion - and rising.
That is more than £100 for every man, woman and child in the UK.
But the fallout from the 2003 invasion has reached much further than the public purse.
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It has tarnished Tony Blair's reputation forever and left Britain and the rest of the world more reluctant to intervene in far-flung countries.
Comparisons with the US involvement in Vietnam were quickly batted away by Downing Street and the White House for some time into the Iraq incursion.
Five years on, it is more difficult to so swiftly dismiss the parallels as the engagement in the Gulf state has become bogged down beyond most earlier expectations.
Last week, it was revealed that the costs have spiralled as the engagement has worn on.
Forecasts for the current financial year put the price of operations in Iraq at £1.449 billion.
That was up from £956 million last year and higher than the £1.3 billion it cost at the height of the conflict in 2003/4.
In total, the venture has set the Exchequer back some £6,412,000,000.
But while the taxpayer continues to count the cost, the man who took Britain into the conflict has moved on into the ranks of former prime ministers.
The most popular Labour leader of all time made a rod for his back with the mission which dogged the last four years of his premiership.
His mortifying realisation that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - as he had insisted there were - was only the culmination of a spin row which surrounded the project from its inception.
While there were more immediate reasons for his departure from Number 10 last year, few would question that the real rot began to set in over Iraq.
Few decisions divided public opinion so sharply as the decision to topple Saddam Hussein - and that was before rows with the BBC, the suicide of weapons scientist David Kelly and fierce criticism of the Government's use of intelligence.
Nevertheless, the decision to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the US in the aftermath of 9/11 over both Iraq and Afghanistan led to a high point in transatlantic relations.
At the same time, Britain's relations with France and Germany - implacable opponents of the intervention - took a turn for the worse.
International relations have moved on since then, not least with the transfer of power from Mr Blair to Gordon Brown.
As opponents of the Iraq War are still fond of pointing out, it was Mr Blair's successor in Downing Street who "signed the cheques".
Mr Brown, chancellor at the time of the invasion, could not help being associated with the conflict to some extent, although he did a good job of steering clear of publicity at the time.
Since taking over as Prime Minister, he has stressed his commitment to drawing down troops in Iraq as conditions permit.
The bigger legacy of Iraq for Mr Brown, however, is the impact it has had on opinion, at home and around the world, about foreign military intervention.
With a series of international crises coming to the fore over the last year - like Darfur, Kenya and Zimbabwe - the public's appetite for Western involvement is so much diminished.
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