A new book estimates the skyrocketing costs of the Iraq war have now reached 12.5 billion U.S. dollars a month, up from 4.4 billion dollars a month in 2003.
The figure was given by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-writer Linda Bilmes in their new book "The Three Trillion War," according to U.S. TV and wire reports Monday.
Altogether, the book says the war will cost at least 3 trillion dollars before it's over, based on the forecast that U.S. troops won't leave Iraq completely before 2017.
The spiraling cost is because of the spurt of additional deployment of troops to Iraq, higher fuel cost, larger bonuses to attract Americans to reenlist and replacement or repair of damaged, worn-out or destroyed equipment, the authors said.
Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winning economist from Columbia University and Bilmes is an expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Source:Xinhua
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