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Iraq: a three trillion dollar war?
Washington (AFP) Mar 19, 2008 The war in Iraq has already cost the United States more than 400 billion dollars by the most conservative tally, but the total bill could surpass three trillion dollars, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. By the Pentagon's count, 527 billion dollars were allocated from September 2001 through December 2007 to finance the war against terrorism, including 406 billion dollars for Iraq. The Congressional Budget Office reported in October 2007 that Iraq accounts for 421 billion, or 70 percent, of the 602 billion dollars that the Congress has authorized for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The CBO estimates that the total cost of the two wars could reach 2.4 trillion dollars by 2017 including interest on the debt, with Iraq accounting for 70 percent of the spending, or 1.68 trillion dollars. But even that pales by comparison with estimates put forward by Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard professor, in a book called "The Three Trillion Dollar War: the True Cost of the Iraq Conflict." According to the authors, the United States is spending 12 billion dollars a month in 2008 to prosecute the war in Iraq. When Afghanistan is included, US war spending bumps up to 16 billion dollars a month. Looking out to 2017, they contend the conflict will cost more than three trillion dollars. They argue that administration cost estimates omit several crucial factors: bonuses offered to attract and retain troops; health coverage for veterans, replacing military equipment; and the impact of the war on the price of oil, which in five years has soared from 25 to more than 100 dollars a barrel. "I think they throw everything in the kitchen sink into the survey, including the interest on the national debt. So it seems like an exaggerated number to us," said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. The independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) says the inflation-adjusted cost of the Iraq war is now far greater than the 1991 Gulf War (88 billion dollars) and is on the verge of surpassing the Korean War (456 billion dollars) and the Vietnam War (518 billion dollars). But spending on Korea and Vietnam accounted a higher percentage of the gross domestic product, CSBA said in a report in September. The CSBA report estimated the total cost of ongoing military operations in Iraq through 2017 at 835 million dollars to 1.26 trillion dollars. "However, projections of funding requirements for FY (fiscal year) 2008 and, especially, beyond are highly speculative," it said. "These costs could vary dramatically, depending primarily on how many troops the United States keeps in Afghanistan and Iraq, and for how long." Related Links Iraq: The first technology war of the 21st century
Outside View: Iran upstages U.S. in Iraq
Washington (UPI) Mar 19, 2008They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And the image of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad glowing -- radiating a Bush-like smugness, some might say -- during a red-carpet welcome in the American-occupied "Green Zone" in Baghdad last week was no exception. That picture was more powerful than a thousand pages in illuminating who has emerged as the big winner after the United States ousted Saddam Hussein. (Leon Hadar is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, a former U.N. bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post and the author of "Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).) |
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