Cost of Iraq War: $727 Per Citizen

The war, in fact, is a factor in the escalating cost of petroleum products here and everywhere else in the world. Leaving that aside as you watch the gas-pump digits rise to Super Bowl numbers this weekend, two anti-war research institutes, the International Relations Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, estimate that the war's cost per citizen has reached $727 -- or close to $3,000 for a family of four. By the end of this year, those figures should reach about $1,300 per citizen, or more than $5,000 for that family of four.

That calculation was based on a very conservative estimate of war costs to date of $204 billion. But even with that low-balling, those billions could have provided health care for 46 million Americans without health insurance, the hiring of 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or the construction of 2 million units of affordable housing. It's money lost in the fog of war -- or perhaps it will be used to do wonderful things for us all by Halliburton and the other defense contractors and private militaries being paid to make Iraq into Iowa with oil.

Ricahrd Reeves, “Iraq’s Civil War Has Cost $3,000 Per U.S. Family – So Far,” Yahoo News, 2/03/06.