How much has been spent on the iraq war

The U. Those costs will peak after , according to the Associated Press. Overall, the U. That includes the interest on borrowing to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Net interest is projected to widen to 2. But a surprising amount of the costs are to pay off the interest on the debt the US has accrued since going to war. The financing method departs from previous international conflicts, where the federal government either raised taxes or issued war bonds to finance war-related expenses.

Sherwood said that the department's costs go towards war-related operational costs, such as trainings and communications, support for deployed troops, including food and medical services, and transportation of personnel and equipment. The US invaded Iraq in on the belief that Saddam Hussein had, or was attempting to make, "weapons of mass destruction" and that Iraq's government had connections to various terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda.

Although the invasion initially had overwhelming support from the American public and the approval of Congress, it is now considered one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in US history. Meanwhile, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of service members due to war-related hardships remain difficult to track.

The Costs of War Project believes calculating the total costs of war — economic, political, and human — is important to ensure that Americans can make educated choices about war-related policies. In and leading up to , President Donald Trump has campaigned on a promise of pulling American troops out and ending "these ridiculous wars" in the Middle East. However, Trump deployed more troops to the country after an attack on the US embassy in Iraq.

T he scale of spending alone make s it hard to grasp. P ublic und erstanding of the budgetary costs of war is further limited by secrecy, faulty ac counting , and the deferral of current costs.

The stories show how U. In , the U. But its mission creep has also created a non-nuclear chain reaction: The U. Many of those heroes thankfully have survived wounds that would have killed them in prior wars.

But that will boost the cost of their care for decades to come. The Department of Homeland Security, which the government cobbled together from existing agencies in , was padded out with its own bureaucracy. The State Department and the U. Agency for International Development got their own off-budget accounts too.

And the federal government began borrowing money to pay for all this. You might think, as a taxpayer, that you could just wander over to defense.