Analysis: Funding the Iraq war on the QT

Tanks and Bradleys awaiting repair or parting out in the U.S.

The war in Iraq is not cheap: weekly spending of about $2 billion; monthly spending of about $8 billion, and going up, according to estimates. Overall, the war will easily end up costing $1 trillion, and maybe substantially more if President Bush decides to "surge" the forces this year.

The Pentagon received an "emergency" $70 billion for Iraq and anti-terrorist operations in October. Come February, the Bush administration is going to say it needs another $100 billion for this year alone.

In truth, we can't be sure of any of these numbers, since the Pentagon says it cannot tell us what the war has already cost, will not tell us what it might cost in the future and has ignored congressional requests and legislation asking for honest budgets, transparent reports on spending and projections of future costs.

Senators and representatives have had to rely on their own estimates to get some sense of the costs for the war. The Congressional Research Service estimates that Iraq has already cost about $380 billion, before the next "emergency" request, but confesses that in the absence of data from the Pentagon, it cannot be sure this is correct.

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