The Iraq money pit
So what’s a more realistic figure?
Anywhere from $1 trillion to $5 trillion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently said that the war’s cost would amount to $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion by 2017. Harvard researcher Linda Bilmes and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, in their book The $3 Trillion War, say that the war’s long-term cost will range from $2 trillion to $5 trillion. Iraq is already the second most expensive war in U.S. history. Only World War II cost more, about $5 trillion, adjusted for inflation. As a point of perspective, consider what the $600 billion we’ve spent already could have purchased, says Bilmes. “The money spent on the war could have fixed Social Security for 75 years or provided health insurance to all American children,” she says.
