In the case of the Iraq war, the future obligations are huge. But Defense Department accounting is done on a “cash” basis, which logs only what the government is actually spending day by day and ignores future obligations. Any publicly owned business, no matter how small, is required by law to use a method of accounting that takes future obligations into consideration. Why the huge difference between our number and the administration’s? One big reason lies in the misleading way the federal government does its accounting. The ultimate cost may well be much higher. And this is a deliberately conservative estimate. The true cost of the war in Iraq, according to our calculations, will, by the time America has extricated itself, exceed $3 trillion. By the administration’s own reckoning, then, the cost of the Iraq war, counting only the money officially appropriated, will soon be some $600 billion, or more than 10 times Rumsfeld’s original number.īut even the $600 billion number is disingenuous-which is to say false. Numbers, but Iraq is by far the larger endeavor and accounts for about three-fourths of the total. It is extremely difficult to disentangle the Iraq and Afghanistan
If Congress provides the money, as it almost certainly will, then the total appropriated for direct operations in these two countries (including reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced base security, and foreign aid) since the wars began will come to roughly $800 billion. Rumsfeld and Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels estimated the total cost of the war in the range of $50 to $60 billion, some of which they believed would be financed by other countries.įor fiscal year 2008 the administration has asked for nearly $200 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush’s economic adviser, suggested that it might reach $200 billion all told, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the estimate as “baloney.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz went as far as to suggest that Iraq’s postwar reconstruction would pay for itself through increased oil revenues. In the run-up to the war there were few public discussions of the likely price tag.
#CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE COST OF IRAQ WAR FULL#
It has also been wrong about the full cost of the war, and it continues to take steps to conceal that cost. The Bush administration was wrong about the need for the Iraq war and about the benefits the war would bring to Iraq, to the region, and to America.
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