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Cost of Iraq war will surpass that of Vietnam war by year's end


The amount of U.S. money spent on the Iraq war will surpass the cost of Vietnam by the end of the year, making it the second most expensive military conflict in American history, behind World War II, according to Pentagon figures provided Friday. If Congress approves the supplemental funding request submitted this week by the Obama administration, it will add $87 billion to the cost of the war for 2009. Added to the amount spent through 2008, it would mean the Iraq war will have cost taxpayers a total of about $694 billion. By comparison, the Vietnam war cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4 trillion, according to a Congressional Research Service study completed last year...

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Cost of Iraq war will surpass that of Vietnam war by year's end

Julian E. Barnes

If Congress approves a request for another $87 billion, the Iraq war will have cost about $694 billion. The Vietnam war cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars; World War II cost $4 trillion.

April 10, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The amount of U.S. money spent on the Iraq war will surpass the cost of Vietnam by the end of the year, making it the second most expensive military conflict in American history, behind World War II, according to Pentagon figures provided Friday.

If Congress approves the supplemental funding request submitted this week by the Obama administration, it will add $87 billion to the cost of the war for 2009.

Added to the amount spent through 2008, it would mean the Iraq war will have cost taxpayers a total of about $694 billion. By comparison, the Vietnam war cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4 trillion, according to a Congressional Research Service study completed last year.

In Vietnam, U.S. forces at their peak had up to three times as many troops at any one time as in Iraq and suffered 58,000 deaths, more than 12 times as many as have died in Iraq. There are two broad reasons for the added expense of the Iraq war: people and equipment.

The Iraq war is the second-longest modern war ever fought with an all-volunteer U.S. force, behind the smaller-scale effort in Afghanistan. Volunteer forces are more expensive because of the financial premium needed to retain people.

"This is a volunteer military, which is pretty unusual in an extended war," said Stephen Biddle, a military historian at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank. "And people cost more."

U.S. officials in Iraq also have relied heavily on private contractors, used to protect diplomats and defend bases, transport provisions and staff essential services such as food services.

A Congressional Budget Office report last year estimated there were 190,000 contract workers employed by U.S. agencies in Iraq -- even more than the number of U.S. military personnel at the peak of the 2007 troop surge, about 160,000 to 170,000 troops. The salaries earned by the contractors were far higher than those of soldiers.

Medical care in Iraq has been far more expensive, Biddle noted. Combat doctors have been able to save soldiers, sailors and marines who, in earlier conflicts, would have died. Both the initial treatment and long term care are expensive.

"Certainly many, many more people who get hit by enemy fire live through the experience and I suspect that treating someone who survives is more expensive than having them die, in dollar terms," Biddle said.

The cost of the Iraq war has also been driven up by the equipment used. The roadside bombs and sandstorms of Iraq have destroyed very expensive, often high-tech equipment at far more rapid rates than the military expected.

U.S. forces are fielding some of the best and most sophisticated forces of any military. But all of that high tech equipment is more expensive than the hardware used in prior conflicts, said Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a think tank specializing in defense funding.

"We have the best equipment in the world," Harrison said. "We have all kinds of capabilities we haven't had in previous wars. We have a lot of high-tech weaponry and high-tech forces."

But war costs have also been driven up because the Pentagon has used post-Sept. 11 funding to modernize U.S. forces. For instance, the budget request sent to Congress this week would replace lost F-16 and F-15 fighters with four of the far more expensive F-22s, at a cost of $600 million.

"There is some loose justification," Harrison said. "But we are buying a much more expensive, much more capable aircraft, so it is really part of our long term modernization."

Questions remain over the accuracy of comparing the costs of wars across decades, and scholars warn of the potential for distortion.

"The world has gotten steadily more expensive," said Anthony H. Cordesman, of the Center for International and Strategic Studies, a think tank. "How do you relate the cost of an old Sherman tank to a modern M1 tank."

But Cordesman agreed that the Iraq war has been very expensive, and in some ways has cost more than it should have. By trying to do reconstruction projects while fighting a war, U.S. officials wasted millions of dollars. Similarly, the failure to build up the Iraqi army and police quickly enough allowed the security situation to grow ever worse in the early years of the war.

Although the cost of Iraq war in 2009 will shrink compared to 2008, the cost of the Afghanistan war has begun to increase. The U.S. spent $34 billion in Afghanistan in 2008. This year, the Obama administration, which is sending additional forces to Afghanistan, plans to spend $47 billion.

Military analysts believe Iraq war costs will continue to decline and the Afghanistan war costs will increase. President Obama wants to withdraw all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by next year, but that plan could leave 35,000 to 50,000 American troops there with other duties.

Under a security agreement with Iraq, the U.S. is supposed to withdraw all of its forces from the country by the end of 2011. But Biddle said that agreement could be renegotiated.

"The pace of cost reductions will be driven by the drawdown," he said. "If all Americans are out of Iraq by 2011, it will cost zero. But I am not sure that is written in stone."

- julian.barnes@latimes.com






:: Article nr. 53321 sent on 11-apr-2009 04:54 ECT

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Link: www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-iraq-vietnam11-2009apr11,0,738307.
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