Nobel Prize winner puts Iraq war cost at $3 trillion

Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who presciently challenged the Bush administration's rose-colored, low-ball costs of the war in Iraq more than two years ago, recently testified before Congress' Joint Economic Committee that the long-term cost of the war will reach $3 trillion.

Stiglitz, a former World Bank VP and Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, told the Committee “Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself ... By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion.”

Bob Herbert's column on Stiglitz's appearance before the committee is linked here .