Iraq War Cost Projected at $12 Billion a Month

UNDATED (AP / WCBS 880) -- Violence may be ebbing in Iraq, but new analyses show the flood of money into the war is steadily rising.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda Bilmes report in a new book ``The Three Trillion Dollar War'' that in this, the sixth year of the war, the conflict will cost about $12 billion a month. That's triple the cost in the war's earlier years.

Beyond 2008, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion -- or more -- by 2017.

They say interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to the bottom line.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has done its own projections and comes in lower. It's forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs.

If you're interested, WCBS 880 has done the math. $12 billion a month comes out to $400 million a day.