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The Count
A Nonpartisan Look at the Price Tag of Overseas Wars
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By HUBERT B. HERRING
Published: August 20, 2006
What, exactly, are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan costing us? (In merely dollar terms, that is; the human cost is another, unthinkable matter entirely.) That’s what the Congressional Research Service, Congress’s nonpartisan public policy research arm, explored in a recent study.

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As the study notes, the Defense Department recently put the “burn rate” — a term for the sums being spent — for Iraq and Afghanistan at $6.8 billion a month. But as the study says, that excludes maintaining and replacing equipment or building and improving facilities. The official “burn rate,” it concludes, is only about 70 percent of the true cost.

For fiscal 2006, monthly costs for Iraq alone could hit $8 billion, the study projected.

The study found a bit of surprising news: that the cost of feeding troops in Iraq fell in fiscal 2005 to $1.2 billion from $2 billion, despite comparable troop levels. No, we have not cut rations. The change may simply reflect success at reducing costs, the study says.