Iraq War Costs

I can think of three constantly recurring questions about the Iraq war: When will it end? How many people have died? How much is it costing? The first is impossible to answer without a political crystal ball. The second is contentious. We know the exact number of American and coalition soldiers it's claimed (4,291 as of this writing, 3,983 of them American). We know less about Iraqi casualties, which have ranged from at least 90,000 to more than 600,000, according to the controversial Lancet study.

The costs of the war are somewhat more tractable, although even those can be deceptive.

As of December 2007, we know that Congress has approved spending $700 billion since 2001 for the combined wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and "terror." The figure does not include the more than $30 billion annual spending on "homeland defense" in the United States. Of that $700 billion total, Iraq accounts for $526 billion. But the Bush administration has requested another $175 billion for the wars, bringing Iraq's likely total, by the end of 2008, to $657 billion (already more than what the Vietnam war cost, even in inflation-adjusted dollars).

Those costs don't include the cost of medical and disability payments to possibly 100,000 veterans, rebuilding a depleted military, interest costs of financing the war, all of which has been paid for with borrowed money, and they don't include the costs of lost productivity, or the lost lifetime earnings and economic contributions of soldiers killed in Iraq. No wonder Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate, is estimating in a new book that the final bill of the Iraq war is likely to approach $3 trillion. That puts it in league with World War II which, in inflation-adjusted dollars, cost between $3 trillion and $4 trillion.

See Also:

• Iraq War Timeline, 2003-2008
• Iraq War Timeline, 1993-2003
• Iraq War Timeline, 1973-1993
• Iraq War: Everything You Want (and Need) to Know
• Iraq: Country Profile