It's no secret that war is expensive. The question a society at war must ask itself is, Just how expensive is it going to be? And, Is the war worth it? With "The Three Trillion Dollar War", Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes take a crack at answering these questions with respect to the current conflict in Iraq.

Taking the second question first, Stiglitz and Bilmes stake out their position in the book's very first sentence: "By now it is clear that the US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake." (p. ix) The authors are certainly entitled to their opinion. The question readers of "The Three Trillion Dollar War" must consider is the degree to which opinion distorts analysis. Ideally we would like a dispassionate estimate of the dollar costs of this war, and we do get that here. Unfortunately the partisan slant of the presentation will devalue the analysis for a perceptive reader, regardless of that reader's position on the war.

The first third of this short book lays out a well-researched lump sum estimate of the costs to date, and likely future costs based on government scenarios, of the Iraq War. As the book's title suggests, Stiglitz and Bilmes think the war is going to end up costing the United States treasury about $3 trillion, based on final troop withdrawal in 2017. Costs not captured in the federal budget, such as lost earning power of troops killed and wounded, push that number higher.

A number of important points become clear in the course of these early chapters. First, the federal government's budgeting and accounting practices are seriously flawed. A startling lack of transparency surrounds the process. Perusal of the book's extensive footnotes reveals how the authors pieced together their cost estimates from a hodgepodge of scattered publicly available government data, private sector and nonprofit estimates, and Freedom of Information Act requests. It seems that no one really knows how much this war is costing the country. The authors believe that is so because the government wants it that way, and based on the evidence it's hard not to agree. In the book's final chapter Stiglitz and Bilmes suggest several reforms which we would do well to consider, including requiring the Department of Defense to present clear financial statements to Congress so the people and their representatives can accurately track the ongoing costs of the nation's wars. Indeed, this should be a basic requirement of any free society.

Another point that becomes depressingly clear is the extent to which the Bush administration underestimated the costs of the war. In hindsight the administration's selling points seem patently absurd. In April 2003 USAID head Andrew Natsios told Ted Koppel that the total cost to US taxpayers of reconstructing Iraq would be less than $2 billion - Iraqi oil profits and donations from allies would cover the difference. Meanwhile the war has ended up costing the country $800 billion to date. At best, the administration's planners demonstrated gross incompetence; at worst, a willful intention to mislead the public in the push to sell the war.

Reasonable people will agree that $3 trillion is a credible number for the base costs of the Iraq War. Unfortunately there are some serious problems with Stiglitz's presentation. For one, the war costs are just presented as lump sums. In reality, these costs will accumulate over a course of years - in the case of some costs (such as medical benefits for injured soldiers) over a course of decades. The intention seems to be more to shock us with big numbers than to inform and illuminate. The analysis would be better presented in multi-year cash flow format.

It's also a challenge to reproduce the author's cost conclusions just based on the text and footnotes. Stiglitz and Bilmes have set up a slick website to market this book - how can we convince them to make their calculations available online so we can check their numbers? It's ironic that a book which calls for greater transparency in accounting should itself fail to provide transparency.

Thirdly, the estimated war costs are not placed in context. There is no discussion of the size of the federal budget, which would help us understand the depth of our financial commitment. On one estimate, $3 trillion represents approximately 5% of the total federal budget between 2003 and 2017; but we have to keep in mind that many war costs will be incurred after 2017, so the actual proportion is lower. There is no room for a detailed discussion here; suffice it to say that Stiglitz and Bilmes have done their analysis and their readers a disservice by failing to contextualize their figures.

The second half of the book discusses the global costs of the war in Iraq - the economic impact to other countries. The crux of this discussion is the author's contention that high oil prices have retarded global growth and that "a significant proportion of the increase in the price of oil resulted from the war." (p. 117) And there is an attempt to quantify the impact to global economic production.

The problem with this assertion is that it is just wrong. Presumably our Nobel Prize winning economist is familiar with the concept of supply and demand. It is this principle which determines the price of oil on world markets. In 2003, when oil was $25/bbl, Iraqi oil production hit its lowest level in 10 years - 1.344 million bbls/day according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008. In 2007, Iraqi production topped prewar levels at an average of 2.145 million bbls/day. Meanwhile oil is now trading above $135/bbl.

Not that Stiglitz presents any arguments in support of his oil price assertion. It's just flatly stated. In fact the high price of oil is a function of rising demand from Asia and falling production from major oil fields the world over. Iraq has had nothing to do with it. Of course it's left unstated that the Iraq reconstruction effort benefits from high oil prices.

The worst part is my suspicion that Stiglitz knows all of this. The oil argument is a way to pump his war cost estimates and spur further outrage among the choir. Since winning the Nobel Prize in 2001, Stiglitz has used his honorific as a bully pulpit to advance a decidedly left-leaning political agenda. Which is more than fine; it's just a shame that he also seems to have abandoned the scholar's commitment to fact-based analysis. Perhaps it's time we recognize the great economist for what he has become: a political pundit with an axe to grind.

This is from the news analysis piece that was posted at Fox News on Monday, June 16, 2008 under the title shown above. The links to the sources are in the original piece.

What is the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? To many, the answer, at least from 2001 through 2007, is $473 billion -- about a quarter of total defense expenditures over those years. It has averaged less than 1 percent of GDP.

$473 billion is probably an underestimate simply because the fighting has already lasted past 2007 and some wounded veterans will require long-term care. But how much more is it?

In a new book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes argue that this emphasis on what the government has already spent dramatically understates the true cost of the war. At roughly six times the defense department's numbers, their $3 trillion estimate has generated much news coverage and controversy.

Stiglitz, the former chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and Nobel Prize winner, told FOX News by telephone from Spain that his message has been getting a "very positive reaction" in Europe. Many are angry over how the Bush administration "misrepresented the facts that got us into the war." Other countries that stayed out of the war are "very relieved that they hadn't gotten involved" when they hear how large the costs of the war have been. He claims, "the British are very sorry for their complicity in selling the war."

According to the authors, the normal reliance on total operational costs for the military leaves out many important costs. Among them are: the future costs of running the war ($669 billion), the future costs of taking care of wounded veterans ($630 billion), the loss of life for soldiers killed or injured ($337 billion), interest payments on loans to cover the federal deficit ($616 billion), and the increased cost of gasoline at the pump and its impact on the economy ($800 billion).

But what to count and how to value these various items is highly controversial. Even opponents of the war have expressed doubt over how Stiglitz and Bilmes have added up the numbers.

For example Richard Zerbe, Associate Dean at the University of Washington School of Public Affairs and president-elect for the International Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, opposes the war, but is concerned that their analysis is "clearly double-counting the costs. It should be obvious." He also has difficulties with the values attached to some of problems created by the war.

Regarding veterans who are disabled and unable to work, Zerbe says that it goes too far to attach the same loss to those soldiers as to soldiers who have died. He feels that the Stiglitz and Bilmes analysis has "too narrow a view of life, way too production orientated." Zerbe argues that just because these disabled soldiers can't work doesn't mean that they place no value on living.

To get an idea of how large Stiglitz and Bilmes's numbers are, compare them the Congressional Budget Office's Matthew Goldberg, the Deputy Assistant Director for National Security, offered last October. Goldberg testified that the future medical care costs, disability compensation, and survivors' benefits up to 2017 would likely range from $10 to $13 billion. (Since the Democrats control congress, they control the Congressional Budget Office.) But with these authors putting their estimate of total costs of veteran injuries at over $900 billion ($630 billion from taking care of the wounded and $273 billion from the harm done to wounded and injured soldiers), it is hard at first to believe that they are talking about the same thing.

Edgar Browning, one of the most cited public finance professors and the author of the forthcoming book "Stealing from Each Other: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit," is even more critical than Zerbe. He notes that, "$473 billion is the most defensible estimate of the cost of the war over the first five years. Everything beyond that is padded. They invent unrealistic scenarios, double count, and the like."

One simple example involves Stiglitz and Bilmes counting both the expenditures on the war as well as the interest payments paid on the money borrowed to finance those expenditures. As far as the taxpayers are concerned, they care about what they have to pay. If the money is borrowed, you can't count both the current expenditure and the future interest payments because taxpayers don't have to pay directly now for the current expenditures. It is only when they pay off the interest that they will really pay the bill.

The same issue arises when they count both the salaries and benefits paid to the soldiers plus the costs of their medical care on the one hand -- all part of the non-disputed operational costs -- and also attaching additional value of life lost to those soldiers who have been killed or injured. Risky jobs such as being a police officer or stunt man require higher pay and benefits to compensate for the chance of being killed or injured. Indeed, it is this very premium that economists use to calculate the loss from police officers getting killed. Economists traditionally count either one of these costs that Stiglitz and Bilmes include, but not both at the same time.

Given their unorthodox method of counting costs, Stiglitz and Bilmes were asked whether any other economists used the same approach to evaluate these interest costs or values of life and injury, but they were unable to identify anyone. Bilmes responded by telling FOX News that "this book is not an academic paper. It is a book about the cost of the war."

On oil prices, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue that "the longer [the war] has dragged on, the higher the prices have gone. This certainly suggests the war has something to do with the rising prices. On this almost all oil experts agree." But, again, even those who oppose the war disagree with this claim. Peter Hartley, a professor at Rice University who specializes in energy economics, told FOX News that in fact the opposite was more nearly the case: "Almost all oil experts would disagree."

Hartley said that the "increase in prices from the war is only temporary. You can only change prices by changes in supply or demand. The only supply and demand changes that they could point to from the war are some temporary changes from uncertainty."

Al Harberger, an economics professor at UCLA and the current president of the International Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis, mentions another concern about the book. Interest rates enter into calculating the costs of the war not only in terms of interest payments on loans, as we have already discussed, but also how to put into current day dollars costs that may not be born for a decade from now.

Harberger argues that a too low interest rate makes it look like the future expenditures on the war look larger today than they really are. Higher interest rates mean that you don't have to put aside as much money to pay for those future costs. In Stiglitz and Bilmes's case, they use an interest rate below what it costs the government to borrow money. Harberger says that the opposite is true, the rate should be higher and you have to figure out what private investment you are giving up by loaning money to the government.

Surprisingly, Stiglitz and Bilmes' book never mentions or responds to well-know responses from other academics who have criticized their earlier published claims. The most notable critics are Stephen Davis, Kevin Murphy and Robert Topel, professors at the University of Chicago. Even Davis, Murphy and Topel's worst-case estimate of the costs of the war run up to $1 trillion in today's dollars, with their most realistic estimates at less than half that amount.

Then there is the huge cost for the Iraqi people. Possibly the most controversial claim in the book involves their estimate that well over one million Iraqis will have died from the US invasion by the year 2010. Without any caution or hesitation, they rely on an extremely controversial study published in the medical journal, Lancet. Stiglitz and Bilmes took Lancet's estimated 654,965 deaths from the American involvement in Iraq from March 2003 to July 2006 and assumed that Iraqis would continue dying at that the same yearly rate through March 2010. The Lancet number is over 10 times the number of Iraqi deaths claimed by the Iraqi and US governments.

Concerns have been raised about whether Iraqis surveyed were honest and provided accurate information or whether they may have given politically motivated answers to exaggerate "'crimes' committed by the Americans." Some survey experts have attacked the survey for not doing the most basic things to "prevent fabrication" of the data. For instance, there was no effort to trace death certificates to confirm claimed deaths. The survey was conducted and overseen by Riyadh Lafta, a child-health official in Saddam Hussein's ministry of health, whom some claim was biased. Others have questioned why the original surveyors' reports and the raw data have never been released to other researchers.

Still others expressed concern that the timing of the survey's release immediately before the 2006 election was political motivated and that the funding for the survey by George Soros was only discovered long after the publicity for the results had subsided.

While acknowledging these objections to the survey conducted by Lafta, Bilmes told FOX News that their estimate of over one million civilian deaths was an underestimate of Iraqi causalities, 92 percent of which were supposedly killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. She said that the numbers showed that "the costs of the war far outweigh any possible gain."

Perhaps what is most surprising about the extensive news coverage the book has received is that critical comments by other economists have received no coverage in the media. A search of news stories on "The Three Trillion Dollar War" did not show a single economist being quoted as disagreeing with their estimate of the cost of the war.

Professor Browning tried to put the costs of the war in some perspective: "[the war] is expensive, but it isn't anywhere near as expensive as other programs that the government does. The war on poverty over the first five years of the war was over $3 Trillion."

As Bilmes said, the media frenzy over their book has been "crazy." That is not surprising, since three trillion dollars is a lot of money. Yet, serious objections to their estimates cut across the political spectrum. Others place the best cost of the war estimates at a sixth of what Stiglitz and Blimes claim.

The authors have abandoned any reasonable definition of the word "cost" for this book, which is more of a liberal hatchet-job than it is a realistic accounting for the cost of the war.

They have taken every liberty with the concept of "cost" in an effort to paint as negative a picture as possible. The result is book which which is sensational, yet offers no meaningful analysis of the true cost of the war.

In effect, the authors have thrown in everything but the kitchen sink, and in some instances, the kitchen sink, too. This, of course, is not the way the "cost" of a war is defined. Clearly, the objective of the book was not to report the true cost, rather, it was to report inflated values that are in no way representative of the actual cost of the war.

Most telling is the fact that Stiglitz, in 2006, reported the cost of the war at $1 Trillion. Now, a short time later, he has multiplied figure by three in what can only be considered an arbitrary allocation of more cost. It raises the question -- if he was off by a factor of three, how good could his analysis have been in the first place? Could it be that the trillion dollar figure just didn't get quite enough attention for his book? After reading it, I think so.

By all means, read the book. But understand that what you're getting is the view of an anti-war liberal who is trying to paint as negative a picture as is possible. Using his methods, the "cost" of such basic government functions as building roads, airports, the Welfare State, and practically every other government activity would be many times the money that was actually spent.

We do not need people re-writing history. We need honesty in reporting, and this book fails miserably in this category.

I'm no economist, and definitely not a Nobel Prize winning one, but by my calculations Joseph Stiglitz has under-estimated the cost of the Iraq war by a factor of 100 in his recently released The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

The difference in our calculations is simple enough: I've assumed that the citizens of the United States and Iraq have an equal value. Stiglitz and his co-author Linda Blimes, on the other hand, made a conscious decision to limit their calculations to the cost of the war to the USA.

Fifty billion of the three trillion they estimate the war is costing the USA is arrived at by putting a statistical value on the life of each American killed in Iraq (be they soldiers or contractors) of $7.2 million.

Using an estimate of 700,000 Iraqi dead, quoted by Stiglitz and Blimes, and applying the $7.2 million worth to each of those individuals we come to a cost of 5.04 trillion. And then if we assume that represents about one sixtieth of the total cost to the country concerned, as it does in Stiglitz's comprehensive estimates for the US economy, we come to a figure of 302 trillion dollars.

Okay, so there are a lot of assumptions in those calculations. It's clear that the cost to Iraq of its bombed infrastructure, the exodus of its professional class, the displacement of over 2.2 million people, the ongoing sectarian violence unleashed by the invasion and the hundreds of thousands of maimed individuals won't be exactly comparable to the price being paid by the USA - so the one to 60 ratio may be wrong. (You be the judge of whether it's likely to be too high or too low.)

I went along to hear Stiglitz take part in a discussion entitled The Cost of Iraq at Writers and Readers Week in Wellington, New Zealand, last month, hoping to hear an explanation for the decision not to include figures on the cost of the war to Iraqis - the victims of the illegal invasion.

It wasn't to be.

The session, ably chaired by TV3's John Campbell featured Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau, English novelist and former journalist James Meek, and Australian theatre director Nigel Jamieson.

The cost to Iraqis was touched on only twice in the 75-minute session. Once in John Campbell's opening spiel when he mentioned the difficulty of knowing just how many Iraqis have died and then when James Meek read an excerpt from one of his last dispatches from Iraq. Written while he was an embedded journalist, the article described watching as a US lawyer dished out $500 to a family of an Iraqi killed by American troops.

It's a superb piece of writing and an important reminder that embedded journalists can - even if most don't - continue to do an important job.

The US Government pays $500,000 to the families of US service men and women killed in the conflict. Which raises an interesting question of the relative worth of US and Iraqi life.

The panel, sadly, moved on without confronting that issue.

It's plainly an uncomfortable topic and as Stiglitz explained to Mother Jones, one that he and his co-author decided was best left alone. Including Iraqi deaths in the calculations would have raised "the question of whether you should or should not value an Iraqi life differently from an American life. That raises fundamental ethical issues, and we didn't want a debate on those issues to detract from the fundamental issue of what America is paying for the war that it brought."

They've definitely avoided the distraction, but at the cost of exacerbating a growing tendency to view the war as a US tragedy rather than an Iraqi one.

If the cost to Iraqis was made clear, perhaps the international demands for reparations for the Iraqi people would grow to a point where they would be included in what America must pay for the "war that it brought."

Returning US soldiers are currently among the few voices calling for the US to pay reparations as Phyllis Bennis recently told the Real News Network. Could that be because they're among the few Americans who know anything about what's actually going on? As Bennis also reports, news about the Iraq war now only makes up one percent of total US news coverage.

The costs that the panel discussion did focus on included: the loss of America's moral leadership (No one laughed. I'm not sure that any state can really claim to offer moral leadership, but the idea that the government of the country that carpet-bombed Cambodia, trained generations of torturers for the dictatorships of Latin America and toppled democratic governments in Chile and Iran had any moral leadership to lose is surely worthy of a chuckle.)

Garry Trudeau spoke of the damage to America's soul caused by the torture at Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure he's right but wonder whether we wouldn't be better focusing on the damage being done to the bodies of its victims.

Stiglitz and Blimes do dedicate 12 pages of their book to the cost of the war to Iraq. They're excellent. They point out that if Iraqi civilian deaths were given the same statistical value they've placed on US lives the cost to Iraq by 2010 would be a staggering $8.6 triillion.

The problem I have with The Three Trillion Dollar War is not one of content but emphasis.

If the delusional Bush vision of a self-financing war had become a reality, would the war be any less objectionable?

After his searing indictment of the working conditions in American meat works, The Jungle, resulted in a commission of inquiry into the safety of the meat coming out those works, Upton Sinclair said he had aimed at the heart of Americans and hit them in the stomach.

By aiming so squarely at the pockets of middle Americans Stiglitz and Blimes seem to be saying their compatriots' hearts are too tricky a target to bother with.

This review was first published by the Scoop Review of Books http://books.scoop.co.nz

"The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict" is an eye-opening confirmation of what many of us have been saying for some time -- the cost of the war announced by the government is but the tip of a very ugly iceberg. In a scrupulously researched and heavily footnoted essay, Stiglitz and Bilmes prove that the true cost of the war is at least three trillion dollars. But their book does much more. It proposes specific reforms that will ensure that in the future the American people will know the rough cost of a war before getting into it.

These proposals are perhaps the most valuable part of the book. They include such common-sense ideas as returning to the Constitutional requirement of a Congressional declaration of war, requiring a full estimate of the likely cost of the war, and a mandate that taxes be raised to pay for these costs. This would mean that the American people as a whole would bear some of the pain, not just the families of young men and women subjected to an "economic draft." And the people would know in advance what their politicians were getting them into. Altogether, they propose 18 reforms (many of which I have been touting for some time), and I intend to see that all of them become part of my "platform." (Reviewed by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., National Commander "The Patriots" www.thepatriots.us )

Just for some comparison, the most expensive war in history has been the War on Poverty. After 43 years and some 8 trillion spent, there is no exit strategy yet. Why no book or movie about this huge expense? I'm just asking.

Joseph Stiglitz, co-author of this book, has street cred, since he is a Nobel laureate. That said, I suspect that there will be predictable responses to this book. Those who oppose the war will love it; those who support the Iraq War will be displeased. That is unfortunate in that, even though Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes are clearly anti-war and anti-Bush, there are still many useful contributions of this book, as it addresses its purpose (Page xvii): "Our goal was simple: to determine the true cost of the war. regardless of whether one supported or opposed U.S. actions in the region, we believed that voters had a right to know the real cost of our policies."

The authors note that four factors have pushed increased direct spending in Iraq and Afghanistan and, overall, the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism): costs of increased number of troops; rising cost of personnel (military forces plus contractors); increasing cost of fuel; keeping equipment in working condition and replacing deteriorated equipment. However, the authors also note that these direct costs of the conflict understate what the actual cost is (and will be). The costs not showing up in official budget numbers: cost of over 4,000 dead troops; the large number of casualties and the care that will be needed to address their injuries; interest payments on the borrowing for the war. They also note that it is difficult to calculate actual costs because the national government accounting system is phony, and would not be tolerated in the private sector. The "cash accounting" system actually hides future costs. They conclude their estimate that the real costs of the war will be around $3 trillion.

As they estimate costs in area after area, they note that (Page 55) "There is a simple message in this book, one that needs to be repeated over and over again: there is no free lunch, and there are no free wars." Pages 57-59 lay out their estimated budgetary costs of the war, category by category.

Following chapters examine issues such as the cost of caring for veterans, costs of war that the government doesn't pay (e.g., lost productive capacity of those Americans killed or seriously wounded or suffering mental health problems, and so on), macroeconomic effects of the war (e.g., rising price of oil, opportunity costs of funds not being available for other socially useful projects, borrowing for the war crowds out money available for domestic investment [the tally of such costs shows up on page 130]), other costs imposed on the global community (e.g., costs to Great Britain).

They conclude with a series of lessons that they believe should lead to reforms, to reduce the odds of such an "adventure" in the future. Some of the suggestions are budgetary, others are structural (making sure that Congress has accurate and relevant information so that it can serve its original role on checks and balances with the President).

This is a good book in that it provides what seem to be some reasonable estimates of the actual cost of the war. There are some problems, though, too. For one, there is at some places political naiveté. For instance, among opportunity costs, they cite the less money is available for important policies such as education, roads, and research. Question: Would such funding be provided, given the political currents in the United States? The fact that funds might be freed up does not mean that they will be spent on such projects as those noted by the authors. Also, their critical orientation toward the President and war almost automatically mean that some readers will turn off in terms of considering the many useful aspects of their work. Finally, while I am not overly optimistic about the end result of our Iraqi involvement, to say that it and must be a failure is a bit too cocky a statement to me. I am pessimistic, but none of us can foresee the future. . . .

Anyhow, this is an important work, rather dry in its style but readable enough.

This is a poorly written book. It is full of assumptions and speculations based more on a liberal political view point than fact. On top of that it is boring. I am sorry I spent my money and time on it.

The stories about the way our wounded soldiers are treated by our government should be read by all thinking about enlisting in the army or marines. Unless you are about to enlist, don't waste your money.

This concise and well written book is a serious attempt to make a reasonable estimate of the cost of the Iraq War. The authors are the Nobelist economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, a specialist on public finance. The authors develop estimates for the direct Federal budgetary costs, the remarkably large longterm cost of providing health care benefits for injured Veterans, additional costs not covered by Federal outlays, and macroeconomic costs. This accounting proved to be surprisingly difficult; much of the relevant information is scattered, actually hidden, and the authors are quite critical of frustratingly lax government accounting standards that are an obstacle to assessing costs. Important estimates are quite literally that, estimates. Assessing the fraction of the Pentagon's regular budget that goes to the war and the fraction of increased oil prices due to the war is informed guess work, though the authors attempt to make conservative estimates.

Virtually all of the subtotals and the final total are remarkably high. Stiglitz and Bilmes provide both a very optimistic and what they regard as a more realistic set of projections. Even the lower estimate in enormous. The magnitude of these effects is so large that subtraction of erroneous estimates of some individual costs will still leave trillions of dollars of costs. While this projection is unilikely to be precisely accurate, Stiglitz and Bilmes are certainly in the neighborhood.

Written as something of a polemic, this book has some other interesting features. It is full of interesting facts. For example, applications to most of the service academies are down by 10%-20%, something remarkable during a period when college applications have reached a all time high. This book contains the best concise set of arguments for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq I've read.

Stiglitz and Bilmes conclude with a set of specific policy recommendations. Many are procedural, such as forbidding use of emergency appropriations for war funding after one year of combat. Other, such as many of the recommendations for veterans care, are administrative reforms. Virtually all seem to be sensible though few will actually be established. The long term effect of this book is likely to be greater and more stringent attention to the long term economic consequences of American involvement in wars.

Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, a lecturer at Harvard, have produced an estimate of the real cost of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, 4,000 US troops have been killed, 58,000 wounded, and 100,000 have returned home with serious mental disorders. Stiglitz and Bilmes estimate that the USA's total lifetime medical, disability and social security costs for the two wars will be $717 billion through to 2017.

They estimate that the war against Iraq will cost the USA a total of $2.65 trillion through to 2017. The war on Afghanistan will cost another $850 billion through to 2017. The total is $3.5 trillion. (Bush misunderestimated it would be $50 billion, wrong by a factor of seventy.) This works out at $25,000 for every US household.

The costs of the two wars to the rest of the world are another $3 trillion, largely because the invasion has driven up oil prices from $25 a barrel to $120. This has cost the world $800 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated $1.6 trillion by 2015. It has cost us in Britain £24 billion so far, and will have cost an estimated £50 billion by 2015.

The wars' direct military costs to us in Britain so far are £8.7 billion; the estimated future costs till 2015 are another £7 billion. Veterans' disability and medical costs are £2.3 billion. The social costs of deaths and disabilities are another £2 billion. The total is £20 billion, £800 per household.

The First World War cost the USA $577 billion, the war on Korea $295 billion, the war on Vietnam $670 billion and the Gulf War $94 billion. The total cost of these four wars was $1.64 trillion, which is just half the cost of the two current wars.

Very provoking. Though I just want to correct page 15 where Stiflitz/Blimes says sole source contracting makes "Excess profits for defense contractors and oil companies. . . . Halliburton's stock price has increased 229 percent since the war began." THIS IS NOT TRUE. HAL has gone back and forth from 35 to 45 since the war began. THESE CONTRACTORS NEVER SHARE THEIR ILLICIT GAINS WITH THEIR SHAREHOLDERS. THAT GOES FOR OIL COMPANIES TOO. They keep all their ill-gotten gains for themselves. They are selfish greedy crooks! The book is otherwise spot on.

We all know that entry into the Iraq war was based on false notions about non-existent weapons of mass destruction. What is less likely, is whether we remember what we were told it would cost: Less than $50 billion - will take only area weeks - six months at the outside. A secretary of the treasury even lost his job because he said it might cost $200 billion. Oh if it were only true!

This text documents the true cost. Aside from the direct expenses of $700 billion, and more than 4000 American live, wemust account for the tens of thousands wounded- their care and lost productivity.

This text is filled with statistics. The argument is persuasive - even overwhelming in its detail. The text does not stray far fromeconomics to make tie argument, nor does it need to. The facts speak clearly and loudly.

The good news is we can afford the Iraq War. Unfortunately, that's the only good news in this book. We were hoodwinked on the cost, the reasons for going to war and who was going to pay for it.

The authors estimates of costs are meticulous, well supported and extremely unsettling. They point out no serious economist still thinks wars are good for the economy and the facts point to this war being even less so because it's being fought on a credit card. The authors even get into the taxpayer fleecing condoned by the administrations active support of no bid contracts extended to a favored few.

A sobering read.

The book is informative, but is very repeatitous. It is not grabbing like a thriller novel but does put in perspective the true cost of the war

Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winning economist who teaches at Columbia and served on President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors from 1993-1997 and at the World Bank from 1997-2000. Linda Bilmes lectures at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government who specializes in budgeting and applied budgeting. Both hate the Bush Administration and the War in Iraq. At least the voice of the book is quite passionate in its railing against it as a disaster and declares other more harsh accusations.

I think this book does three things well. First, it exposes the way government misuses budgeting for political purposes. That is, it always and in every case for every program that it wants to start misrepresents its true costs. The authors limit these accusations to this war, but if you are willing to go look at what was said in every other war and welfare program, similar disingenuousness was on display.

Second, it shows how poorly our country treats its veterans. A national shame that others have spoken of since the Revolutionary War down to present times. And a global tradition of all armies since the first army ever created by man. I hope we heed the calls for caring for the widows and orphans and those who were wounded and maimed in our service. Even if we think we don't have the money to bear these costs, this is an obligation that would justify cuts in other government spending to meet.

Third, I think that exposing the collateral costs of war (not just this war) in terms of opportunity costs, international relations, and the future state of the world is worth considering. Just dashing into a conflict simply because you believe you might be able to beat the enemy militarily quickly isn't really enough is it. You still have to live and work in the world after the war. Of course, not going to war has the same considerations. If you don't show strength in the face of aggression, you invite more of it and what then? When you don't act in the face of genocide (say, Rwanda and Sudan) because they are not strategic countries that also says something about the sincerity of your moral positions as more or less posturing.

However, there are also some things I think the book gets wrong. While I am all for giving the PROJECTED all-in cost of this war, the publicity makes this number seem like a fact and isn't clear until you read the book about how much of the cost is projected out-year costs in caring for veterans and interest on the debt of money borrowed for the war. In fact, the borrowing is for running the government, and putting the interest completely on the one program you don't like is cheating. For example, let's say someone was for the war and against the prescription drug program and they treated the borrowing as if it were for that social program and that the war was funded out of current receipts in order to inflate the projected cost of the program and how unaffordable it was. You would throw a flag on that play, right? Well, it's the same here. Nor are they clear in how much of the cost they bundle in would still be spent on national defense even if we were at peace (including all the out year costs they count in their war model). Plus we were already in Iraq trying to maintain the sanctions and fighting all the associated political battles. How much was that costing us? The authors also don't really cover all the costs associated with 9/11 because Iraq wasn't directly involved in that attack. However, it seems as if we are keeping the terrorists at least somewhat occupied because they haven't managed a major attack here since then. If they did, most of the supposed trillions that could be used for other things would be gone. This should have been addressed in their calculations.

Second, they severely understate the comparison costs of previous wars to make this one sound terribly costly. For example they note on page 6 that there were more than 16 million men under arms in World War II, but say that it cost only $5 trillion in 2007 dollars. This is foolishly low, I believe. Did they really use the same methodology for every facet of that war (including what unleashing the nuclear bomb and the Cold War, the cost of stationing armies in Europe for sixty years, the Veteran's Administration, the cost of NATO, and so forth) as they do for the Iraq War? Or did they just take government figures and adjust them for inflation (which seems more likely).

Third, while they rightly admit that we can afford $3 trillion dollars with our present economy (and rightly complain about the opportunity costs of spending so much money on war), they don't provide a similar context for previous wars. The cost of World War II was much greater as part of the GDP and national treasure, as was the Civil War and so forth. Economics is all about context and to not provide such meaningful comparisons in context is politics more than economics. Again, it is cheating.

Their suggested reforms to the budgetary process for war are interesting, but have only a small chance to be implemented in anything like their presentation in the book. But they make interesting reading, even when you disagree with them (such as reforms 6, 8 and 9, which are really political arguments about this war and could either be irrelevant or deadly in future wars).

If you hate Bush and the war, you will love this book. If you support Bush and the war, you will get angry at this book. However, if you want to take a balanced look at what the authors actually provide, I think you will learn quite a bit about the political views of the authors, a bit about the war and its costs, and get examples of why political arguments make for bad science, even social science.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

A very thorough wirtten book and provides insight into the related cost and consequency of a war to the nation and the world, but the book does not point out what is the consequecy or cost if the war is not carried out. Therefore the book does not prodcue a whole picture of the story.

This exceptional book lays out for the reading public what wars really cost. It also lays out explicitly the causes and the effects of this madness and clearly identifies those other costs that are unquantifiable.

Once again Stiglitz, and in this book Bilmes, prove that they not only know how to write a readable book on a tough suibject, but also they know how to collect and stack the facts so that the conclusion is inescapable. No spin here!

Congratulations to both on an outstanding production!

I'd rate this beautifully organized piece as a six-star book if six were available -- with a cautionary, calculation-related caveat. As past chairman of a large Middle-Eastern languages department for the US Defense Languages Institute (USDLI) on the Virginia side of Washington D.C., I've enough first-hand experience with Arabs, etc., to have profoundly lamented the Bush administration's brashly arrogant ignorance displayed by their invasion of Iraq, followed by the spectacular emptyheadedness of Bush's "Mission accomplished" boast.

So I relate well to the authors' points, most succinctly summarized in their Table 1.1. contrasting the $100 billion initial estimate, the $500 billion operation costs to date, $1400 billion future ops, $2000 billion future veteran-care costs, $2400 billion social costs, $4300 billion macroeconomic costs, $5100 billion current and future interest costs, and another $5700 billion overall for Afghanistan. The authors underscore their contention that the above represent ONLY costs to the USA, not other countries such as our allies, or Iraq itself.

Chapter two documents the above costs to our nation's budget. Chapter three explains the true costs of caring for US veterans. Chapter four outlines costs that the US government does NOT pay. Chapter five expands on the macroeconomic effects of the conflict. Chapter six is an outstanding presentation of the multifaceted global consequences of our Iraq involvement. Chapter seven is an intelligent explanation of the difficulties of exiting Iraq, with suggestions. Chapter eight, "Learning From Our Mistakes," is an outstsnding presentation of eighteen recommended reforms for the future.

Because, after leaving the academic world, I headed two national corporations, I find that I can quibble with the above numbers, though the authors' explanatory comments seem essentially uncontrived in a manipulative sense.

Now for the caveat: Though as I make these comments I don't excuse the outrageous stupidity of our involvement in Iraq, my accountancy experience in running large companies requires that I face the reality of a few unpleasant facts. The authors do not include factors such as the US's (admittedly immoral) economic gains from the war -- such things as employment gains in certain sectors, and war-equipment manufacture shown as national-productivity gains. In other words, there has been income as well as expense in this war, and a more thorough accountancy presentation would have included figures on the income side of the balance sheet. But I repeat, especially for you readers who aren't accountancy-oriented, my comments on this side of the ledger do not excuse the ignorance, the arrogance or the immorality of this war. I'm only pointing out the relatively well known fact that wars do produce economic gains along with costs, and some wars have been waged with the ill-gotten economic benefits in mind.

I also want to reemphasize that I believe the financial costs of this war FAR economically outweigh any narrow income on the other side of the ledger.

Please read and recommend this outstandingly important book.

A bit dry, but considering the topic, it is very good. All politicians should read this book. It gives a very detailed, and sobering, break-down of the current and futures costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. You will get a picture not illustrated in the national media. I hope this book becomes a reference source for political science classes.

This is a very important study to uncover the economical consequences of Iraq war. In well functioning democracies, citizens need to be informed about the consequences of the actions taken by their elected officials in order to be able judge their performance and to prevent future failures. This book serves well in the purpose to make citizens informed.

The authors have not only quantified the cost of the conflict but also provided with reforms to make war costs more accountable and to prevent the government from being able to hide the great amount of the cost and deferring it to the next generations.

This book is enough to make an anarchist out of anyone who reads it. I won't review the contents (admirably done elsewhere by reviewer Steele), but if anyone doesn't believe a Nobel Prize winning economist from Harvard and his associate, also from Harvard, then there is no one left to tell us the true story. According to the authors, the government is certainly not going to tell the complete, true story about Iraq.

How our government in a representative democracy could have gotten us into the situation in Iraq boggles the mind. As Stiglitz and Bielmes point out repeatedly, our involvement was/is a combination of lies, stupidity, poor planning, "big ideas" (transform the Middle East!), cronyism, arrogance and the influence of a foreign country, Israel (if you doubt this, see THE ISRAEL LOBBY, Mearsheimer and Walt, pp. 229-262).

And what have we gotten out of it? 4000+ dead, tens of thousands wounded, gas approaching $4.00 a gallon (the war was about oil, right?), the hatred and contempt of the rest of the world ("hypocrites," they rightly call us), a worn-out army, and, very important to these economists, a debt of borrowed money that will take years and decades to pay back.

As the authors point out, what could we have done with that money to make our own counry better! And the tens of thousands of talented men and women who, if not dead, will suffer the effects of this war for the rest of their lives. . ..

So, what have we gotten out of our involvement in Iraq? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Less than nothing. We even have a Presidential candidate stupid enough to claim that we should stay there for years. And a government that we elected to look after our interests got us into this.

The Bush administration told taxpayers that the Iraq war would cost about $50 billion dollars and be paid for by that country's oil revenues. Joseph Stiglitz, chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and a 2001 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, estimate that the real cost of the war is three trillion dollars. And that's almost certainly a "gross underestimate" due to the conservative methods and estimates used in their calculations. Even worse, because of the gross incompetence and deliberate secrecy of the DOD accounting procedures, no one can know the true cost of the war.

If you divide three trillion dollars by the number of households in the United States, you get $25,000 per household. That's your share for the Iraq war. But don't worry. You won't have to pay because because the war has been funded entirely by borrowing money. We'll let others pay our debts. Plus, the economic costs of the war are off the books, above and beyond the DOD's bloated budget. The richest country in the world, the authors observe, hasn't been able or willing to live within its means. But there's a "simple message of this book, one that needs to be repeated over and over again: there is no free lunch, and no free wars. In one way or another, we will pay these bills."

We're already paying heavy "opportunity costs." The human consequences of the war have been as disastrous as the economic costs. After five years, the most powerful country in the world, a country that spends more on its military than all other countries combined, hasn't been able to subdue a country with only 10 percent of its size and 1 percent of its GDP. Iraq's middle class has been ravaged. A majority of its children don't attend school. The country now has only half the number of doctors as before the war. As of September 2007, over 4 million Iraqis (one of every seven) had been displaced from their homes. Oil has soared from $25 a barrel to $100 a barrel since the war began, making the oil companies (along with defense contractors) one of the few beneficiaries of war. Over 751,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have already been discharged from the military will need medical care and benefits the rest of their lives (1.6 million men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan).

Yes, it would be a disaster for us to leave Iraq. But the longer we wait, the more disastrous these consequences will be for the US, for Iraq, and for the world. With no exit plan in sight, and Bush intent upon running out the clock in order to pass the problem to the next president, it looks like we'll delay that debacle just as we've pushed the economic costs into the future. Given these economic and human costs, it's unconscionable that any administration can act with such impunity.

This book should be required reading for military officers, veterans, members of Congress. Well-written, factual, jargon-free, and a web of information. Web, because Stiglitz and Bilmes lay out the links within the cost of any war. Isolation of each variable without laying out the web or network is deceptive when costing out the universe (war in totality) Relating information in this book to proposed veterans' legislation further demonstrates the depths of understanding possessed by the authors! Remember this: the total cost of any war is not known until the last veteran of that time of war is dead! A MUST READ to be re-read!

It's an assumption--and probably a bad one--that had not these monies been and will be spent on the war(s), Congress/the President would have chosen to borrow/spend equivalent sums on alternative and presumptively more worthy initiatives. I see little evidence for this.

Both authors of this book are correct when they say that no amount of money can value the cost of a human life. Considering the amount that has been lost in the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq by the American government and its "coalition of the willing," their statement almost seems banal. No amount of rhetoric, no matter how sophisticated, can justify the initiation of force against another human being without provocation. It is a moral axiom that such an initiation is the ultimate evil, and no accountant's spreadsheet is going to be able to add up the costs of unprovoked violence. Even if the illegal and immoral war against Iraq only cost one dollar, it would not matter. It is not the cost of war that is at issue, but rather whether it has moral justification. A war is to be fought only for purposes of defense against an armed attack. The accountants can then inform relevant parties what the costs will be, and then practical decisions will have to be made about the scale of the resulting conflict.

There is some value to this book though if one takes a pragmatic view. The extreme numbers that the authors report on the cost of the immoral and illegal war against Iraq may encourage more to take measures to end it. It is also has value in the sense that it gives the reader insight into the accounting system of the U.S. Federal government, and how difficult it is to obtain accurate information on spending activities. For this reason the authors described themselves as being "sleuths" rather than analysts in a recent public forum on their book. Their discipline in obtaining the relevant information is to be commended, and such investigative activities should be emulated whenever possible, if only to obtain a more accurate picture of the workings of governmental bureaucracy. In addition, their recommendations on veteran care, if implemented, will assist greatly in granting future veterans the medical assistance they require after coming home from legitimate wars. Their current situation is deplorable, especially if compared to the kind of care that those who ranted on about their need to go to war have access to. The latter class of individuals was keen on rhetoric but short on intestinal fortitude.

One could also take the book as being a tutorial on the current operational readiness of the Armed Forces of the United States. It gives insight into just how much it takes to fund a war, and this information is extremely valuable if a legitimate war is to be fought in the future. High technology, logistics, and medical care are to be weighed in, as much as future medical care for injured veterans. One can only hope that this will be the last book that estimates the costs of a war, but with political eyes currently looking east of Iraq, this seems doubtful.

This is one of those very rare endeavors that is a tour d'force on multiple fronts, and easy to read and understand to boot.

It is a down-to-earth, capably documented indictment of the Bush-Cheney Administration's malicious or delusional--take your pick--march to war on false premises.

As a policy "speaking truth to power" book; as an economic treatise, as an academic contribution to the public debate, and as a civic duty, this book is extraordinary.

Highlights that sparked my enthusiasm:

1) Does what no one else has done, properly calculates and projects the core cost of war--and the core neglect of the Bush-Cheney Administration in justifying, excusing, and concealing the true cost of war: it fully examines the costs of caring for returning veterans (which some may recall, return at a rate of 16 to 1 instead of the older 6 to 1 ratio of surviving wounded to dead on the battlefield).

2) Opens with a superb concise overview of the trade-off costs--what the cost of war could have bought in terms of education, infrastructure, housing, waging peace, etcetera. I am particularly taken with the authors' observation that the cost of 10 days of this war, $5 billion, is what we give to the entire continent of Africa in a year of assistance.

3) Fully examines how costs exploded--personnel costs, fuel costs, and costs of replacing equipment. The authors do NOT address two important factors:

+ Military Construction under this Administration has boomed. Every Command and base has received scores of new buildings, a complete face lift, EXCEPT for the WWII-era huts where those on the way to Iraq and Afghanistan are made to suffer for three months before they actually go to war.

+ The Services chose not to sacrifice ANY of their big programs, and this is a major reason why the cost of the war is off the charts--we are paying for BOTH three wars (AF, IQ, GWOT) AND the "business as usual" military acquisition program which is so totally broken that it is virtually impossible to "buy a ship" with any degree of economy or efficiency.

4) The authors excel at illuminating the faulty accounting, the subversion of the budget process, and they offer ten steps to correction that I will not list here, but are alone worth the price of the book. What they do not tell us is:

+ Congress rolled over and played dead, abdicating its Article 1 responsibilities--the Republicans as footsoldiers, the Democrats as doormats.

+ The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not done the "M" since the 1970's and is largely worthless today as a "trade-off manager" for the President.

5) I am blown away by the clear manner in which the authors' show the skyrocketing true cost up from a sliver of the "original estimate" out to a previously unimaginable 2.7 trillion (cost to US only, not rest of world). The interest cost in particular is mind-boggling.

6) They note that the costs the government does NOT pay include:

+ Loss of life and work potential for the private sector
+ Cost of seriously injured to society
+ Mental health costs and consequences
+ Quality of life impairment (I weep for the multiple amputees)
+ Family costs
+ Social costs
+ Homefront National Guard shortfalls needed for Katrina etc.

7) The authors go on to discuss the costs to other countries and to the globe, beginning with the refugees and the Iraqi economy. They do NOT mention what all US Army officers know, which is that Saddam Hussein ordered all the nuclear and chemical materials dumped into the river, and the mutations, deaths, and lost agricultural productivity downstream have yet to be calculated.

8) They touch on three delusions that John McCain and others use to demand that we "stay the course" and this also merits purchase of the book. I was in Viet-Nam from 1963-1967, and I well remember exactly the same baloney being put forth then. We ought to apologize to the Iraqi people, and instead of occupying the place, give them the billions they need to restructure after our devastating occupation.

The conclude the book with 18 recommended reforms, each very wise, and these I will list--the amplification provided by the authors in the book is stellar.

1. Wars should not be funded through "emergency" supplementals.
2. War funding should be linked to strategy reviews (and guys like Shinseki should kick morons like Wolfowitz down the steps of Capitol Hill when they contradict real experts and lie to Congress and the public)
3. Executive should create a comprehensive set of military accounts that include all Cabinet agency expenditures linked to any given war.
4. DoD should be required to present clean, auditable financial statements to Congress, for which SecDef and the CFO should be accountable (let us not forget that Rumsfeld was being grilled on the Hill on 10 September about the missing $2.3 trillion, and the missile that hit the Pentagon rather conveniently destroyed the computers containing the needed accounting information)
5. Executive and CBO should provide regular estimates of the micro- and macroeconomic costs of a military engagement (over time).
6. [simplified] Congress must be notified by any information controls that undermine the normal bureaucratic checks and balances on the flow of information.
7. [simplified] Congress should reduce [or forbid] reliance on contractors in wartime, and explicitly not allow their use for "security services, while ensuring all hidden costs (e.g. government insurance) are fully disclosed.
8. Neither the Guard nor the Reserve should be allowed to be used for more than one year unless it can be demonstrated the size of the active force cannot be increased.
9. [simplified] Current taxpayers should pay the cost of any war in their lifetime via a war surtax [rather than imposing debt on future generations]

These next reforms address the care of returning veterans:

10. Shift burden of proof for eligibility from veterans to government
11. Veteran's health care should be an entitlement, not for adjudication
12. Veteran's Benefit Trust Fund should be set up and "locked"
13. Guard and Reserve fighting overseas should be eligible for all applicable active duty entitlements commensurate with their active duty.
14. New office of advocacy should be established to represent veterans
15. Simplify the disability benefits claims process.
16. Restore medical benefits to Priority Group 8 (400,000 left out in the cold)
17. Harmonize the transition from military to veteran status so that it is truly seamless
18. Increase education benefits for veterans.

I put this book down totally impressed. Completely irrespective of one's political persuasion, strategic sagacity, or fiscal views, this book is a tri-fecta--a perfect objective combination of wise policy, sound economics, and moral civic representation.

BRAVO!

I also recommend:
DVD Why We Fight
DVD The Fog of War: Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush

Afterthought: David Walker, Comptroller General, has resigned from his 15-year appointment after failing to find adult attention within Congress when he briefed them this summer to the effect that the USA is "insolvent." His word. Our government is broken beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

I generally have a hard time dealing with writing that deals with accounting. I was not a business major, and it is hard for me to follow some of the monetary flows. It was startling to me when I discovered that this book was very easy to follow and was written for the average person. It is well written, with wonderful documentation and an easy to read and follow style.

The numbers presented are mind boggling and numbing. How do you account for such huge numbers, and why haven't we known before that the numbers were this big? The answer lies, primarily, in accounting tricks used by the government to hide certain expenses of to put them off onto other budgets so that the true cost could never be accurately accounted for. It's quite a statement that the DOD flunked its last 7 audits; a trick that would send private company executives to prison.

If you really want to know what the war will cost, where each of those costs is hidden and what those costs consist of, then this book is well worth the money. Every American should read this book now, before the election, to truly understand how we have been hoodwinked.

Three trillion dollars for the war in Iraq is an incredible amount, almost beyond comprehension, and certainly far beyond the figures provided by the Bush administration. Yet this total is made both credible and comprehensible through the documentation of Joseph Sitlitz (2001 Nobel Prize-winner in economics, and Professor at Columbia) and Linda Bilmes, Harvard University expert on public policy and finance.

Compelling alternative uses for the money are numerous. For example, we could have put Social Security on sound financial footing for a fraction of that cost, and avoided the nearly 4,000 American deaths (plus $500,000/death benefits) and 100,000 estimated Iraqi deaths - plus an untold number of seriously wounded and their long-term disability and health costs. (Stiglitz found that 40% of Gulf War troops were declared disabled, and that was only a one month war; he sees Pentagon estimates of Gulf War II wounded and disabled as grossly understated, and documents that conclusion. Another key point - peak expenditures for WWII veterans did not occur until 1993; thus this war will affect spending decades into the future.) Alternatively, America's trillion dollar+ infrastructure needs could be met with only half that expense.

Other costs include skyrocketing re-enlistment bonuses (up to $150,000 - their alternative is personal safety or much higher-paid private security work), the extra costs of using reserve and guard troops, up to $1,222/day for private security guards to replace servicemen paid less than one-sixth that, lost billions to reconstruct Iraq and spent in non-competitive bidding, and massive equipment replacement costs.

Then there are the opportunity costs associated with spending the money overseas, with no return to the American economy, increased pressure on the dollar, and the likely increased cost of oil. Finally, what about the interest costs of financing this war with debt, and our increased reliance on foreign nations holding that debt?

Supposedly this war is being fought to promote democracy. Yet, as Sitlitz points out, it is being mostly sold and funded through hiding the costs from the public. Continuing our presence in Iraq may, with interest, raise the total to $6-7 trillion. Meanwhile, bin Laden roams free, and even more Islamicists hate us.

"The Three Trillion Dollar War" is MUST reading.

Three trillion dollars for the war in Iraq is an incredible amount, almost beyond comprehension, and certainly far beyond the figures provided by the Bush administration. Yet this total is made both credible and comprehensible through the documentation of Joseph Sitlitz (2001 Nobel Prize-winner in economics, and Professor at Columbia) and Linda Bilmes, Harvard University expert on public policy and finance.

Compelling alternative uses for the money are numerous. For example, we could have put Social Security on sound financial footing for a fraction of that cost, and avoided the nearly 4,000 American deaths (plus $500,000/death benefits) and 100,000 estimated Iraqi deaths - plus an untold number of seriously wounded and their long-term disability and health costs. (Stiglitz found that 40% of Gulf War troops were declared disabled, and that was only a one month war; he sees Pentagon estimates of Gulf War II wounded and disabled as grossly understated, and documents that conclusion. Another key point - peak expenditures for WWII veterans did not occur until 1993; thus this war will affect spending decades into the future.) Alternatively, America's trillion dollar+ infrastructure needs could be met with only half that expense.

Other costs include skyrocketing re-enlistment bonuses (up to $150,000 - their alternative is personal safety or much higher-paid private security work), the extra costs of using reserve and guard troops, up to $1,222/day for private security guards to replace servicemen paid less than one-sixth that, lost billions to reconstruct Iraq and spent in non-competitive bidding, and massive equipment replacement costs.

Then there are the opportunity costs associated with spending the money overseas, with no return to the American economy, increased pressure on the dollar, and the likely increased cost of oil. Finally, what about the interest costs of financing this war with debt, and our increased reliance on foreign nations holding that debt?

Supposedly this war is being fought to promote democracy. Yet, as Sitlitz points out, it is being mostly sold and funded through hiding the costs from the public. Continuing our presence in Iraq may, with interest, raise the total to $6-7 trillion. Meanwhile, bin Laden roams free, and even more Islamicists hate us.

"The Three Trillion Dollar War" is MUST reading.

This book not only describes the cost of the Iraq War long term, but explains how billions of dollars were wasted in Iraq due to the total corruption of the Bush administration, starting with Bush refusing to allow open bidding on the contracts to rebuild Iraq. Those contract then went to his or the Vice President's cronies. In addition the Bush administration makes no mention of the long term costs of the injured soldiers returning from Iraq. Bush has also lied to the American people about the number of injured soldiers and after being caught on the government's own web site, they took the site down.