Stiglitz and Bilmes, meanwhile, project $422 billion to $717 billion in costs over the lifetime of soldiers who by 2017 are wounded or otherwise mentally or physically disabled by the wars. This factor figures most in the category of veterans' medical care and disability payments, where the CBO foresees $9 billion to $13 billion in costs by 2017. Significantly, the two studies view different time frames, the CBO calculating possible costs met in the next 10 years, while Stiglitz and Bilmes also include costs incurred during that period but paid for later, such as equipment replaced in post-2017 budgets. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan drop sharply and early - to 30,000 by late 2009 for the CBO, and to 55,000 by 2012 for Stiglitz-Bilmes - and a second in which the drawdown is more gradual. Looking ahead, both the CBO and Stiglitz-Bilmes construct two scenarios, one in which U.S. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 percent higher than 2004's, the CBO reports.
price tag for the 12-year Vietnam War.Īlthough American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. That total far surpasses the $670 billion in 2007 dollars the Congressional Research Service says was the U.S. That counts not just military operations, but embassy costs, reconstruction and other war-related expenses. 30, end of fiscal year 2008, assuming Congress fully funds Bush administration requests. budget $845 billion in 2007 dollars by next Sept. In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Stiglitz, of Columbia University, and Bilmes, of Harvard, report the two wars will have cost the U.S. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country. No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq, said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion _ with its devastating air bombardments - and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy. These numbers don't include the war's cost to the rest of the world. will be committing "significant" future resources to the wars, "requiring decision makers to consider difficult trade-offs as the nation faces an increasing long-range fiscal challenge." 30 report to Congress, the GAO observed that the U.S.
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