Talk:Financial cost of the Iraq War

Direct cost
This article seems only to be "direct costs", or expenditures of the main invading countries.

The costs to Iraq and the indirect costs to other countries have been huge, and should either be mentioned, or else the title should be adapted accordingly. DanielDemaret 05:06, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The article only refers to the budget cost to the USA (and perhaps its allies), not the financial costs to the countries invaded. That is also a financial cost.203.184.41.226 (talk) 08:20, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Misleading figures
Some of these figures are misleading as they include things such as Tsunami Relief and operations in Afghanistan, which are unlreated to the costs incurred from the conflict in Iraq Trypsin24 19:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

== DISPUTED ARTICLE; Erroneous topic heading and misleading information in not only the article but in many of the sources; The topic states it is about the cost of the IRAQ WAR, yet in the majority or most references and in the article itself, are included fundings and costs that include the Afghanistan Campaign, which started in Oct 2001 as part of the Global War On Terror(GWOT). The article heading should be changed or transfered to the GWOT as it is misleading, in error and has expressed references of bias and some disputable distortions. ustrader 15:16, 21,May 2007

Actually, the main source for this article has been pretty specific in addressing the difference between the cost of the Iraq war and the cost of the Afghanistan war. As you'll note in the list of fiscal year expenditures, the two costs have separate figures. Publicus 15:07, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

'' Cost comparisons are irrelevant, and intentionally support anti-war ideology. I think they should be removed. There should be relevant information only.''

Hidden Costs of Iraq and/or Afghanistan War
Worth noting.

'Hidden costs raise' US war price

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7092053.stm

The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing nearly double the amount previously thought, according to a report by Democrats in the US Congress. They say "hidden costs" have pushed the total to about $1.5 trillion - nearly twice the requested $804bn (£402bn). Higher oil prices, treating wounded veterans, and the cost to the economy of pulling reservists away from their jobs have been taken into account.

User:gelato 02:28, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

The so-called "hidden costs" pointed out by the Democrats doesn't include the "hidden benefits" of the war which are well defined and supported by the testimony of William W. Beach to Congress in 2008. http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/discussion-of-the-costs-of-the-iraq-war?ac=1 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:6000:9840:E00:7DB1:D883:EF00:34D7 (talk) 16:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Stiglitz' figures
He's now claiming $3 trillion, as per BBC Radio Four interview on February 25th 2008Jatrius (talk) 19:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

screw the metaphorical analogies: where's the straight out budget allocation
I do not really get the whole "oh it will provide X a day for a family of Y" analogies when there's NOTHING on what the official allocation in the national budget is, which as I recall, the War only accounts for 25% of the previous deficit before this new year's budget (in which things were shaken up a bit). John Riemann Soong (talk) 10:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

This article is a disappointment
I came here looking for information and all I got was ideology. Specifically, I want to know:


 * What is the actual cost of war operations?
 * How much is the incremental cost of the Iraq war over normal defense allocations?
 * What percent of the US Federal Budget does it account for?

In short, I wanted facts. All I see is hand-wringing about the evils of war and how the money could have been spent differently. Extremely disappointing. I fear the critics of Wikipedia may be right -- it just can't produce an unbiased article on any politically-charged topic.

Joebarnhart (talk) 20:06, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

So make some edits and make the article less-biased. Publicus 23:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe he doesn't have the expertise to make those changes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.24.30.11 (talk) 15:07, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Cost of War be merged into this article. mmortal03 (talk) 11:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, Cost of War is an anti-war org, this article is just trying to list budget appropriations and equipments expenses. Publicus 21:27, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

What? No. Absolutely not. Cost of War is a much larger issue than just the 2003-2010 Iraq War. If anything, this one should be merged into Cost of War, and even that is a terrible idea. .אבי נ (talk) 20:39, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree. Cost of War should be redirected to this article, and the lead paragraph of that article placed here.  There are so many better articles that could be placed at Cost of war; cost of conflict is a reasonable start, but the analysis methods should also be somewhere on Wikipedia.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 15:58, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality of data
The very first number mentioned in this article contests the "official" numbers. This is not neutral. The official numbers should be the primary data used within this article.

In addition, the people who contest the costs include other data. Including retirement, injury, debt interest, etc. However, they don't include any positive effects, such as averting future terrorism and increasing the security of America. In order to remove bias, the direct, official, actual spending numbers must be the primary source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sloppyjoes7 (talk • contribs) 21:36, 12 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Two thought, “official” numbers are in doubt because it is impossible to separate Iraq from Afghanistan funding is some appropriations and from all DoD appropriations during the war years. For example, say DoD bought x rockets from their baseline appropriation.  Of those y went to the Pacific and were never used and z went to the gulf and were all fired but there is no record of in which action they were used.  How do you allocate for their cost?  While not “direct” costs, future interest on money borrowed to fund the war and money to fund for wounded warriors is most certainly a cost that must be acknowledged.  Oldfart48 (talk) 17:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Any truly objective apples-to-apples accounting of the "cost of the Iraq War" would have to calculate the _marginal_ cost delta between military expenditures on the involved assets on expeditionary Iraq War-related deployments vs. what expenditures on those same assets would have been had they been deployed to other 'peacetime' overseas or domestic bases or remained on reserve status. The costs of this "no Iraq War" scenario are very large, recognizing that, e.g., the majority of the military personnel involved would still have been on the the payroll, peacetime training and readiness exercises still would have involved major expenditures and (regrettably) loss of equipment and personnel injuries and fatalities through accidents. 98.169.109.116 (talk) 14:45, 8 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Agree that cost vs alternative is ideal, but it must avoid arguable hypotheticals to remain objective. I'd prefer to see the official expenditures first with a break-down as to Iraq and combined Iraq+other costs,followed by rebuttal figures and also a comparison with cost of the standing army not deployed during that period.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.10.0.181 (talk) 06:52, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

This is about the Iraq war -- not the so-called "War on Terror"
Please do not conflate the two. -- DBooth (talk) 19:07, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

costsofwar.org says $4.4 trillion for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan wars
Economic Cost Summary | Costs of War.
 * http://costsofwar.org/article/economic-cost-summary - "The Costs of War economics research team used the most up-to-date publicly available figures at the time of their writing to calculate the spending on the wars from 2001 through fiscal year 2014."

The chart on the above page says the total will be $7.9 trillion when additional interest through 2053 is included.

Who We Are | Costs of War: --Timeshifter (talk) 05:11, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
 * http://costsofwar.org/article/who-we-are

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Costs of War project update

 * Estimating The Costs Of War, Then And Now. By Tom Engelhardt. Nov. 21, 2017. Huffington Post. From the article (emphasis added):

The link in the above quote goes here:


 * United States Budgetary Costs of Post-9/11 Wars Through FY 2018: A Summary of the $5.6 Trillion in Costs for the US Wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Post-9/11 Veterans Care and Homeland Security. By Neta C. Crawford, Boston University. November 2017. Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. From the report (emphasis added):

This Google search pulls up more articles:
 * U.S. Spent $5.6 Trillion on Wars in Middle East and Asia: Study.

Various articles use the above total cost to come up with the number of $23,000 per taxpayer. It would be more accurate to say per adult U.S. resident. $5.6 trillion divided by $23,000 equals 243.5 million people. See: Demography of the United States: "There were about 125.9 million adult women in the United States in 2014. The number of men was 119.4 million." That totals 245.3, close enough for government purposes. :)

I don't know if the main source breaks it down just for Iraq War costs. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC) --Timeshifter (talk) 20:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Cost of War report from DoD
I have found this report, from https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2018/03/cow-aug17/. It is a DoD report and so may merit an appearance here. But I am not sure how to separate out the Iraq War costs from the "Global War on Terror" costs and I am not sure that separating them even makes sense. Given the scope of the GWoT, does limiting this to one country make sense?

Separate from that, does anyone else see a way to integrate the data from this report into this page? I feel that if I tried, I would end up muddying the waters.

RayKiddy (talk) 23:08, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

== Costs of War project update. Nov 2018