A bagillion dollars

That's approximately the financial cost of the Iraq war to the U.S. alone. Okay, well, if you want to nit-pick, it's more like $1 - 2 trillion dollars. However you cut it, it's a huge fucking waste of money. The scary numbers come from a new study that expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war. You think someone would have considered these as critical variables in the beginning, but hey, that's neoclassical economics for you. The authors of the paper, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist, and Linda Bilmes, a Harvard budget expert, caution that, "Our estimates are very conservative, and it could be that the final costs will be much higher. And it should be noted they do not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or the UK."