The Real Cost of the Iraq War

During the run up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration estimated that the military mission would run around $50 billion, even though experts doubted those numbers at the time. (In 2002, Yale’s William Nordhaus guessed that the costs could reach $500 billion within five years.) Now, here we are in 2008, and new tallies suggest that the real costs could rise to somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion. This award-winning piece — MP3 – iTunes – Feed — delineates the mounting costs and introduces you to some of thinking in Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes’ new book: The Three Trillion Dollar War.

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