The Center for American Progress has tallied up the costs of the war in Iraq (read the report here), and according to their calculations, we've spent $748 billion, with up to $717 more coming in veterans' benefits. I thought it might be useful to compare this to our previous wars, so using data from this Congressional Research Service report, and adjusting the CAP figures to 2008 dollars to make it all comparable, I made this graph:
Quite something -- Iraq will end up costing us more than any war except World War II. But what about casualties, you might be asking? It's been a while since we were all aware of the running tally of the number of men and women who have died in Iraq. But here are the numbers (data from here):
Of course, that doesn't count Iraqi casualties, which CAP says number at least 9,451 from the Iraqi Security Forces, and between 96,037 and 104,754 civilians.
-- Paul Waldman
