News: The Cost of the War in Iraq: US$3 Trillion

Before America invaded Iraq, officials in the Bush administration estimated the war might cost tens, at most hundreds, of billions of dollars. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes lay out very different figures in their new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict." In it, they tally data on everything from troop pay to equipment to veteran's entitlements to larger social and economic costs, and examine how mismanagement, opaque accounting, and the privatization of the conflict have resulted in a megabill that Americans could be paying back for the next half-century.

Stiglitz: "You can look at it and say, "This is a small percentage of a rich economy," or you can look at things like the proposed children's health-insurance program that was recently vetoed as too expensive—that can be measured in the cost of days of fighting in Iraq. Funding for a major autism research effort is equal to hours of fighting. Bush has said there's a "giant hole" in our Social Security program, but for one sixth the cost of the war in Iraq, we could have fixed Social Security for the next 50 to 75 years." (Full)

My observation: this is only the cost to the US. Add to that the cost of the other nations involved, the cost to the world economy due to the staggering oil prices, the Iraqi economy, and your total tally would even be higher.
Leave alone all the human suffering this has caused. Was this all worth it, for a war waged under false pretences?

Source: Newsweek