Source - U.S. Financial Aid To Israel: Figures, Facts, and Impact

Costs to Date

Including Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2006, Congress has given the White House $350.6 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and for the "global war on terror." (By comparison, the total cost of the Korean War was $350 billion.) The Congressional Research Service broke that total down as follows:

    $253 billion for war fighting, occupation duty, and support operations for Iraq;

    $74 billion for Afghanistan;

    $23 billion for Pentagon operations in Homeland Defense; and

    $600 million for enhancing general security.

Current Costs

War fighting in Iraq consumes an average of $194 million per day or $5.8-$6.0 billion per month.

    This is more than the $5.2 billion (in 2005 dollars) per month average spending in Vietnam between 1964-72. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that by 2010, accumulated war costs will reach $600 billion, the same cost as Vietnam.

    Fighting in Afghanistan averages $700 million per month.

    Operation Noble Eagle, the Pentagon's contribution to Homeland Defense, runs $200 million per month.

For Iraq, Afghanistan, and other activities related to the global effort against terrorism, that's an average of $6.7-$6.9 billion per month or $80.4- $82.8 billion annually to FIGHT. (By comparison, foreign aid for FY2006 stood at $20.9 billion.)

Future Costs

These depend on how long U.S. troops are present, how many, and how tenacious the insurgents are.

    Redeployment: Before the war, CBO estimated that redeploying U.S. ground troops at war's end would cost $5-$7 billion. (Deployment costs were estimated at $13 billion.)

    Personnel: Congress voted to increase the Army from 482,400 to 522,400 and the Marines from 175,000 to 178,000. Estimated costs of these additional 43,000 personnel needed because of Iraq is $7.4 billion per year. (In 2002, CBO pegged operations and support spending (which includes salaries and items needed for day-to-day operations) per active duty member at $160,000 (Congressional Budget Office, "Longer-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans, January 2003). These costs continue to rise, averaging 2.5 percent annually. In FY2005, this would mean an average per active duty person cost of $172,300. With active duty end strength of 1.4 million, the TOTAL operations and maintenance cost is $241 billion.)

    Recruiting and Retention: Congress increased the FY2006 request by $622.5 million for NEW recruiting and retention incentives. Congress authorized the Army to give ALL new recruits $20,000 if they sign a four year contract. (The $20,000 bonus used to be restricted to two specialties and required six year enlistments.) With a recruiting target of approximately 80,000 for FY2006, the theoretical cost of this provision is $1,600,000,000.

Free graduate school for 200 more junior officers who agree to remain in uniform beyond 5 years. Assuming two years schooling at $20,000 per year per officer, this adds $8 million.

Marines are offering $30,000 re-enlistment bonuses.

    Equipment: Congress added $422 million to the FY2006 DoD spending bill for National Guard equipment.

As of November 2005, recapitalization of damaged and destroyed Marine Corps equipment is estimated at $12.8 billion. The estimate for Army recapitalization is at least $14 billion.

Adding the war fighting cost of $80.4-$82.8 billion to future near-term annual costs of $42-$44 billion gives a range of $122.4-$126.8 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan, Noble Eagle, and other security on an annual basis.

And the casualties in Iraq?

Killed

    2,110 U.S. military, including 47 women (March 19, 2003-November 30, 2005)

    98 British soldiers

    103 soldiers from other coalition forces

    438 U.S. civilian contractors working for DoD

    7,169 Iraqis in 2005 (reported)

    25,903 Iraqis from insurgent attacks since March 19 (Pentagon)

Wounded

    15,500 U.S. military, including 327 who have lost at least one limb

    3,963 U.S. contractors

Source - Iraq Strategy: Still AWOL, Still Costly by Col. Daniel Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Rep. Waxman adds this:

    Key Facts about the Reconstruction

    Lack of Progress.

    Massive spending on reconstruction has produced little or no progress in key sectors like electricity and oil. Despite a $2.2 billion investment in Iraq's oil infrastructure, production and export levels have actually dropped below pre-war levels. And despite the $4.4 billion the Bush Administration spent to boost Iraq's electricity production, it has fallen far short of its goal of 6000 megawatts of peak output capacity. In fact, the Administration has conceded, "We'll never meet demand." Iraqis living in Baghdad typically have just two hours of power followed by four hours without power throughout the day.

    Rampant Overcharges and Lax Oversight.

    Large government contractors like Halliburton have repeatedly overcharged the taxpayer. Auditors at the Defense Contract Audit Agency have identified over $1.4 billion in unreasonable and unsupported charges by Halliburton in Iraq. Whistleblowers have testified about $100 bags of laundry, $45 cases of soda, and brand new $85,000 trucks being abandoned because of a flat tire. Yet the Administration refuses to take action. Last month, the Defense Department paid Halliburton $130 million in reimbursements, profits, and bonuses for billings that the department's own auditors recommended against paying.

    Incompetent Management.

    The Bush Administration's management of the reconstruction of Iraq has been fundamentally incompetent. Billion-dollar contracts were awarded with little or no competition to favored contractors. Competition for discrete reconstruction projects was suppressed by dividing Iraq into a handful of fiefdoms and awarding lucrative monopoly contracts to companies that never had to compete against each other for specific reconstruction tasks.

    Burgeoning Corruption.

    Between May 2003 and June 2004, U.S. officials shipped nearly $12 billion in cash to Iraq. As government audits later found, the cash was spent and disbursed by U.S. officials with virtually no financial controls or reliable accounting. The Administration cannot account for over $8 billion that was transferred to Iraqi ministries. This unsupervised flood of cash into Iraq became an open invitation to corruption. A senior U.S. official already has been charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from a U.S. contractor in exchange for steering up to $3.5 million in fraudulent contracts his way. Government investigators have said that there are dozens of other criminal corruption cases being processed.