Only World War II was costlier than Iraq war

Only World War II was costlier than Iraq war

Steven Davis on the Price Tag of the Iraq War.
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Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University public finance Professor Laura Bilmes, both of whom served in the Clinton administration, have included those calculations in a new study of the war's long-term costs. Their estimate of the war's price tag: $3 trillion.
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Estimate revised down
The White House and Pentagon came back in January 2003 with a number that was more palatable - $50 billion to $60 billion. Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, boasted that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction with increased oil revenues.
Economists say the trouble with the early estimates was they focused only on the cost of invading Iraq and then bringing the troops home. No one budgeted for a long occupation.
"It's quite apparent in hindsight the reason the war has been so expensive is because we have now maintained well over 100,000 and maybe closer to 200,000 troops in theater for five years," said Steven Davis, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, who co-authored a 2003 paper comparing the cost of invading Iraq with the cost of containing former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.