Iraq war's price tag close to Vietnam's
Cost is projected to surpass $660 billion sometime next year
Originally published January 15, 2007
By the time the Vietnam War ended in 1975, it had become America's longest war, shadowed the legacies of four presidents, killed 58,000 Americans along with many thousands more Vietnamese and cost the United States more than $660 billion in today's dollars.
By the time the bill for World War II passed the $600 billion mark, in mid-1943, the United States had driven German forces out of North Africa, devastated the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Midway and launched the vast offensives that would liberate Europe and the South Pacific.
The Iraq war is far smaller and narrower than those conflicts, and it has not extended beyond the tenure of a single president. But its cost is beginning to reach historic proportions, and the budgetary "burn rate" for Iraq might be greater than in some periods in past wars.
If U.S. involvement continues on the current scale, the cost of the war on terrorism - including the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and on other foreign fronts - is projected to surpass this country's Vietnam spending sometime next year.
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Instead of including war costs in the regular budget, such as the one Bush will send to Congress next month, the administration has been asking Congress for emergency-spending bills that short-circuit many of the usual review procedures for appropriating funds.
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