BBC is reporting that IPS/FPIF released a study saying the war is costing $5.6 billion a month. Vietnam War was $5.1 billion a month. http://www.ips-dc.org/ Coming August 31, 2005 -- The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of War and the Case for Bringing Home the Troops. A Study by the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy In Focus By Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver and the IPS Iraq Task Force
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/27/AR2005082700035_pf.html
>...On the green plastic wall of a portable toilet at Baghdad military
airport, I read the following graffiti, scrawled by a civilian
contract employee: "14 months. $200,000. I'm out of here. [Expletive]
you Iraq." Beneath it was a response from the ranks: "12 months.
$20,000. What the [expletive] is going on here?" Speaking of money,
the administration has never come clean about the massive debt it's
piling up for us and our descendants. The nonpartisan Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimates that the Vietnam War
cost the United States $600 billion in today's dollars. Iraq,
according to the center, is costing between $5 billion and $8 billion
a month -- $218 billion to date. That would mean $700 billion if the
guns fall silent six years from now, a modest timetable according to
numerous military analysts. Other estimates predict an eventual bottom
line of over $1 trillion.
--
Michael Pugliese