Financial cost of the Iraq War


The following is a partial accounting of financial costs of the 2003 Iraq War by the United States and the United Kingdom, the two largest non-Iraqi participants of the multinational force in Iraq.

US war costs

Direct costs

The costs of the 2003–2010 Iraq War are often contested, as academics and critics have unearthed many hidden costs not represented in official estimates. The most recent major report on these costs come from Brown University in the form of the Costs of War, which totaled just over $1.1 trillion. The United States Department of Defense's direct spending on Iraq totaled at least $757.8 billion, but also highlighting the complementary costs at home, such as interest paid on the funds borrowed to finance the wars.
Those figures are dramatically higher than typical estimates published just prior to the start of the Iraq War, many of which were based on a shorter term of involvement. For example, in a March 16, 2003 Meet the Press interview of Vice President Dick Cheney, held less than a week before the Iraq War began, host Tim Russert reported that "every analysis said this war itself would cost about $80 billion, recovery of Baghdad, perhaps of Iraq, about $10 billion per year. We should expect as American citizens that this would cost at least $100 billion for a two-year involvement."

Appropriations

According to a Congressional Budget Office report published in October 2007, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 including interest. The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq, or $6,300 per US citizen. A CRS report was released in December 2014. It placed the cost of the war operations in Iraq as of January 1, 2014, at $815 billion out of the total $1.6 trillion approved by Congress since September 2001.
Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, have stated the total costs of the Iraq War on the US economy will be three trillion dollars in a moderate scenario, described in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War and possibly more in a study published in March 2008. Stiglitz has stated: "The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions...Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq."
A 2013 updated study pointed out that US medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war had risen to $134.7 billion from $33 billion two years earlier.
The extended combat and equipment loss have placed a severe financial strain on the US Army, causing the elimination of non-essential expenses such as travel and civilian hiring.
Neta Crawford, chair of the political science department at Boston University, in her Costs of War project, estimated the long term cost of the Iraq War for the United States at $1.922 trillion. This figure includes not only funding appropriated to the Pentagon explicitly for the war, but spending on Iraq by the State Department, the healthcare of Iraq War veterans, and the interest expense on debt incurred to fund 17 years of U.S. military involvement in the country.. Military Times. Feb. 6, 2020.
that crashed on September 21, 2004.

Military equipment lost

The US has lost a number of pieces of military equipment during the war. The following statistics are from the Center for American Progress; and they are only approximations that also include vehicles lost in non-combat-related accidents as of 2006.

2006 land equipment approximation

In June 2006, the Army said that the cost of replacing its depleted equipment tripled from that of 2005.
As of December 2006, according to government data reported by the Washington Post, the military stated that nearly 40% of the army's total equipment has been to Iraq, with an estimated yearly refurbishment cost of $US 17 billion. The military states that the yearly refurbishment cost has increased by a factor of ten compared to that of the pre-war state. As of December 2006 approximately 500 M1 tanks, 700 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 1000 Humvees are awaiting repair in US military depots.
In September 2007, the Congressional Budget Office produced a report outlining the Army's Reset Program and included some combat loss numbers.

2007 land equipment approximation

As of March 2006, approximately £4.5 billion had been spent by the United Kingdom in Iraq. This came from a government fund called the "Special Reserve" which at the time had a balance of £7.4 billion. According to the Ministry of Defence, the total cost of UK military operations in Iraq from 2003 to 2009 was £8.4bn.
Official calculations stated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined cost £20.3 billion.