Its cost too has spiraled way beyond the original estimates.

             A recent study by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Foreign Policy in Focus (FPF) reveals that the total bill for the war in Iraq has already crossed 204 billion dollars2 and an additional 45 billion dollars is currently pending for approval before the Congress as 'bridge finance' before the formal approval of the next tranche. The Pentagon, according to the report, is currently spending 5.6 billion dollars per month on operations in Iraq, an amount that exceeds the average cost of 5.1 billion dollars per month (in real 2004 dollars) for U.S. operations in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972. At current rates, the United States would end up spending more than 700 billion dollars over 10 years; since the entire cost of the Vietnam War was 600 billion dollars (in current dollars), the Iraq War is most likely to prove even more expensive.

             How the Cost Impacts the US Economy? Opposing View Points.

             There is no consensus on the extent to which the costs of the Iraq War impact the US economy. The neoconservatives, with their foreign policy agenda of unilateralism, making the United States an imperialist power and setting up a "model of democracy" in the Middle East, consider the cost of the Iraq War a small price to pay for such "lofty" objectives. They insist that the War has achieved its major goals of liberating Iraq from tyranny, and providing an example of democracy in "America's image" in the heart of the Islamic world.3 In order to justify the invasion of Iraq, the neocons and their supporters in the US administration tended to low-ball the cost estimates of the Iraq War. Faced with the spiraling cost they still consider it as a long-term investment for the promotion of free-trade and a globalized world which would ultimately benefit the US economy. .

             The left-liberals in the US, who vehemently opposed the Iraq invasion, point to the disastrous effect of the spiraling Iraq War bill on the already out-of-control US federal budget deficit, which has crossed the $ 700 billion mark for the current year.