Title: Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion
Headings: Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion
Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion
Content: The largest expenditures for World War II veterans were in the late 1980s. Payments to Vietnam and first Gulf War veterans are still climbing," it said. The second major hidden cost of the two conflicts will be servicing the debts incurred as a result of the "unprecedented" decision to pay for the wars entirely from debt while cutting taxes during wartime – as the Bush administration did in 2001 and 2003. The decision to finance the war through borrowing has already added $2 trillion to the US national debt – or about 20 per cent of the total national debt added between 2001 and 2012. "The immediate budgetary cost has been $260 billion in interest paid for borrowings to date," the report said, but warned that accrued interest on existing borrowings, and the cost of future borrowings would see the eventual bill "reaches into the trillions". The estimates dwarf the initial projections of the war costs. In 2002 Lawrence Lindsey, then President Bush's chief economic adviser, estimated that the "upper-bound" costs of war against Iraq would be $200 billion, but added that the "successful prosecution" of the war would be good for the economy. That notion is severely challenged by the report which warns that cost of the wars is already affecting investment in education, infrastructure and scientific research, and that a large proportion of the money spent did not help to grow the wider US economy. The 'baked in' costs of higher wages and benefits for service personnel and better care for veterans is also likely to constrain the ability of the US Department of Defence to invest in maintaining and upgrading fighting forces. "The war debt has been especially unhelpful.