Cost of Iraq Reaches Towards the First $1 Trillion Mark

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22 September 2007 With President George W Bush's $195 billion request to fund Iraq and Afghanistan for fiscal year 2008, the estimated cost of the occupations is $750 billion. The figure doesn't include emergency funding taxed onto non-war related bills approved by Congress since year 2004. The United State's fiscal year begins 1 October.

President Bush's $195 billion request is the highest single request since 2003 and approximately 13 percent up from fiscal 2007. Early in the year President Bush estimated he would need $148 billion.

The Center for Defense Information in Washington DC estimates that Iraq costs taxpayers about $12 billion each month, and the costs have yet to show any decline. Occupying Iraq has already topped those costs associated with the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) proposed cutting Iraq funding, but the liberal labeled concept holds no chance of succeeding. Forty-nine Republicans and 20 Democrats opposed Feingold's proposal at the start.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that even with a 60 percent reduction in troops in Iraq, the annual cost would still be $30 billion, but it is uncertain when such a reduction would take place. The Pentagon estimates the cost of Iraq in fiscal 2009 to be at least $200 billion.

In January 2006, Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz claimed that had the White House left Iraq alone in 2003 -- the United States could have forever fixed its Social Security woes for the money spent on Iraq. Today the United States still faces Social Security failure on top of its Iraq and Afghanistan war costs with no immediate financial resolution to the three hot topics.

The White House estimated they'd spent $357 billion through January 2006 to cover ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and admitted it was not keeping tabs on those tag-ons meant for emergency funding requests -- none of which Congress has rejected so far.

The United States and those countries participating in the occupations have lost 4,094 so far. The civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth tracking according to the Pentagon.




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