this is SO offensive and SO frightening to me (to all of us)

(i wonder if this includes the prices of the EFFECTIVE NON EXISTANT BODY ARMOR each of our deployed troops should be wearing)
Economists say cost of war could top $2 trillion
Tally exceeds White House projections

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff January 8, 2006
(Correction: Because of an editing error, the names of Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes were misspelled in an early edition in Sunday's World pages in a story about the cost of the war in Iraq.)
WASHINGTON -- The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion after factoring in long-term healthcare for wounded US veterans, rebuilding a worn-down military, and accounting for other unforeseen bills and economic losses, according to a new analysis to be presented today in Boston.
The estimate by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes far exceeds projections made by the Bush administration.
The figure is more than four times what the war was expected to cost through 2006 -- around $500 billion, according to congressional budget data.
The new study is billed as a detailed analysis not only of the potential costs of sustaining the operation in Iraq for at least several more years, but also the expenses likely to be incurred by taxpayers long after US troops withdraw.
The government will have costly obligations to a new class of veterans, be forced to make new investments in stressed military ranks thinned by multiple tours of duty, and withstand the enduring impact of the war on the nation's overall financial outlook.
For example, the study attributes a portion of the increase in oil prices -- $5 per barrel -- to instability in the Middle East caused by the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and sparked a bloody insurgency.
It estimates that the shock to the oil industry has already added at least $25 billion to the price tag of the conflict.
The analysis also attempts to account for the war's impact on the ballooning federal deficit, its ripple effects on overall economic growth and investment, and losses in productivity.
''There are quite a few things that are not being captured in the budgetary numbers" presented by the government, said Stiglitz, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001. ''When you add up all of those numbers, it increases substantially. I think $2 trillion is conservative."..........