The cost of the Iraq War could end up to $6 trillion dollars

The war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion through fiscal year 2013, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. That’s trillion, with a “t”. Including future costs for veteran’s care, and so on, raises the cost to $2.2 trillion.

And the war was financed with debt, then we should also include a charge for interest on the debt. The Iraq war’s share of cumulative interest on the US debt through 2053 will raise the total cost of the war to $3.9 trillion. To weigh what opportunities we lost, we’ll consider two conditions: the direct cost, and the direct cost plus interest.

But Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated in 2008 that the Iraq war could cost America up to $5 trillion dollars.

And the Brown University study actually concluded that the Iraq war could end up costing $6 trillion dollars over the next 40 years.



Source