Initial Cost Estimates For The Iraq War Were Almost Too Low To Believe

The U.S. will shell out somewhere as much as $6 trillion dollars for the Iraq War, once all is said and done, according to a recent report out of Brown University.

According to Reuters, that figure includes $1.7 trillion spent so far with an additional $490 billion in benefits. Other expenses, including interest, could well mean that the expenses will balloon to as much as $6 trillion in total.

As Dave Weigal of Slate points out, that figure is well above the initial $60 billion dollar estimate that came from the Congressional Budget Office in the months leading up to the war.

It's possible that their estimate came as a result of the skewed idea that the entire war could be waged in months. There are folks who defend the originator of that figure — Mitch Daniels, then head of the CBO — by saying that the estimate was for only six months of war.

Daniels estimate came a full six weeks after then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's own incorrect estimate: that said the war would last "Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that."

According to NBC news, that $60 billion estimate matches what the U.S. would pony up following 8 years of conflict just to rebuild the country the war had wrecked.