Experts: Iraq war to cost $1 trillion

UPI | January 8 2006

A new study by a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a budget expert puts the total cost of the Iraq War at $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

In a paper presented to this week's Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston, Linda Bilmes of Harvard and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University said the final bill is likely to be much higher than the Bush administration estimates.

The study includes the cost of disability payments and health care for the over 16,000 injured military personnel -- one-fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. Stiglitz and Bilmes also analyzed the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and higher oil prices.

"Shortly before the war, when administration economist Larry Lindsey suggested that the costs might range between $100 and $200 billion, administration spokesmen quickly distanced themselves from those numbers," Stiglitz said. "But in retrospect, it appears that Lindsey's numbers represented a gross underestimate of the actual costs."

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