The true cost of the war on terror: $3.7trillion and counting… and up to 258,000 lives
30/06/2011 14:13Source: Daily Mail
In the 10 years since U.S. troops went into Afghanistan to root out the Al Qaeda leaders behind the September 11, 2001, attacks, spending on the conflicts totalled up to $2.7 trillion.
Those numbers will continue to soar when considering often overlooked costs including obligations to wounded veterans and projected war spending from 2012 through 2020.
They also do not include at least $1trillion in interest payments and expenses.
High cost: A study by Brown University has said up to 258,000 people have been killed in the conflicts - many of them civilians
More than 30,000 Allied personnel have died in the War on Terror
The study, 'Costs of War', brought together more than 20 academics to uncover the expenses of war.
It underlines the extent to which war will continue to stretch the U.S. federal budget and questions what has been gained from the massive investment.
Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said: 'I hope that when we look back, whenever this ends, something very good has come out of it.'
Catherine Lutz, head of the anthropology department at Brown and co-director of the study, said: 'We decided we needed to do this kind of rigorous assessment of what it cost to make those choices to go to war.
'Politicians, we assumed, were not going to do that kind of assessment.'
