Only World War II was costlier than Iraq war
The United States has poured more than $500 billion into Iraq, mostly for military operations. But that figure is just a small piece of the much larger bill that taxpayers will pay in the future. Because the money for the war is being borrowed, interest payments could add another $615 billion. A heavily depleted military will have to be rebuilt at a cost of $280 billion. Disability benefits and health care for Iraq war veterans, many of them severely injured, could add another half-trillion dollars over their lifetime.
Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University public finance Professor Laura Bilmes, both of whom served in the Clinton administration, have included those calculations in a new study of the war's long-term costs. Their estimate of the war's price tag: $3 trillion.
"We are a rich country, and we can, in some sense, afford it. It's not going to bankrupt us," said Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor, who published the findings in a new book,"The Three Trillion Dollar War." But Stiglitz said the war has contributed to a weakening economy - partly by feeding the instability that has sent oil prices to record highs - and has saddled the country with debts that will make it harder to respond to a recession, fix Social Security or meet other future needs....
In historical perspective, the Iraq conflict is already one of the most expensive conflicts in U.S. history.
The price tag in Iraq now is more than double the cost of the Korean War and a third more expensive than the Vietnam War, which lasted 12 years. Stiglitz and Bilmes calculate that it will be at least 10 times as costly as the 1991 Gulf War and twice the cost of World War I.
Only World War II was more expensive. That four-year war - in which 16 million U.S. troops were deployed on two fronts, fighting against Germany and Japan - cost about $5 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars.