Cost of Wars Soars to $440 Billion for US

by Julian Borger February 4, 2006 for The Guardian

The Bush administration has said it is planning to spend $120bn (£68bn) on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year, bringing their total cost so far to $440bn. The spending request, which will soon be presented to Congress, marks a 20% increase over last year, despite plans to draw down US troop levels in both war zones in the coming months. The administration also plans to ask for a downpayment of $50bn on war costs next year. The requests are expected to pass easily. The spending on the Iraq conflict alone is now approaching the cost of the Korean war, about $330bn in today's dollars. Meanwhile the cost of the overall "war on terror" - relabelled The Long War in the Pentagon - is already close to half a trillion dollars, and will soon equal that of the 13-year Vietnam war.

"There is some reason to be surprised that it's this much," said Steven Kosiak, a military spending analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the defense department would need $85bn and that was with no drawdown in troops." A White House budget official, Joel Kaplan, said that some of the extra spending would go towards keeping military equipment going in the desert, to accelerate training of Iraqi forces, and to give US troops better protection against roadside bombs. The budget request did not include reconstruction spending.

The defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, once predicted that the Iraq war would cost $50bn. George Bush's former economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was forced to resign for being alarmist after predicting in 2002 that the Iraq war could cost up to $200bn. Even before the new supplemental requests, spending on the conflict in Iraq has reached $250bn. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and Columbia University economist, has calculated that the Iraq war could ultimately cost $2 trillion, including lost productivity because of casualties and foreign deployments of reservists, as well as the long-term impact of disability payments and general economic disruption. The administration's low pre-war estimates assumed that the invasion would be largely welcomed and coalition troops would quickly be able to hand over to a new government in Baghdad. The money being earmarked for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is outside the normal defense budget. That budget for 2007 is $439bn, a 5% increase.

The budget will be delivered to Congress at the same time as the Quadrennial Defense Review, in which the Pentagon lays out its longer term strategy. The review envisages the development of more mobile, specialized forces in smaller units. There will be a 15% increase in special operations forces, and a new air force drone squadron. Nearly 4,000 more troops will be assigned to psychological operations and civil affairs units. Military experts have applauded the reforms but say the review does not explain how they will be paid for. There is no mention of cutting back on some of the huge and controversial equipment in development, such as the F22 and F35 fighter planes and the US navy's new DD(X) destroyer.