Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld: Ooops! We blew that cost estimate...

President Calvin Coolidge once proclaimed, "The business of government is business." But what happens if faux businessmen like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, all of whom relied on government deals to make them "successful" in business, try to run the government? The results, as we have learned, are disastrous....

Iraq war will cost up to $5 trillion

By BOB DEANS, Cox News Service

WASHINGTON — The Iraq war will cost Americans between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, including military spending, broader economic costs and decades of benefits and medical care for combat veterans, a Nobel prize-winning economist told the Joint Economic Committee on Thursday.

For Georgians, that translates into between $86.5 billion and $144.1 billion, based on the state's current share of national tax payments, according to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a research organization based in Northampton, Mass., that examines the local impact of the federal budget.

The upper end of the national estimate is nearly double what the same economist, Joseph Stiglitz, projected just two years ago. He attributed the dramatic increase to the continuing intensity of the war, which began five years ago next month, and the likelihood that operations there would continue for at least another year.

The war's gravest toll has been paid in blood. Fighting in Iraq has so far taken the lives of 3,973 U.S. troops and left nearly 29,300 wounded. Its staggering expense, however, has already dwarfed the 2003 White House war estimate of $60 billion, and the price continues to rise.

The rest of Bob Deans' piece is here. More on the true costs of the Iraq War, both in terms of quality of life and dollars is below:

• “War at Any Cost? The Total Economic Costs of the War Beyond the Federal Budget,” Testimony by Joseph E. Stiglitz before the Joint Economic Committee
• "The Cost of Conflict," Newsweek
  
• "Iraq War could cost trillions more," Marketplace
• "The true cost of war," The Guardian
• "Linda Bilmes on Our 'Three Trillion Dollar War'," Fresh Air from WHYY