New study calculates the costs of the War on Terror

More borrowing and spending than for any war except World War II, coupled with far less accountability.

That's the verdict on the Bush administration's spending policies for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, laid out in stark detail in a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments study released Monday.

Even with a budget-crushing $1.7 trillion projected cost for the global war on terrorism through 2018, the military research institute's estimate was conservative, said Steven Kosiak, the center's vice president for budget studies.

Among the center's major findings: the global war on terrorism has cost more, in inflation-adjusted dollars (though not as a percentage of GDP), than any other war in history except World War II; military operations and related costs are being funded almost entirely through “emergency appropriations,” making oversight of spending nearly impossible; and the biggest reason for the growth in the budget last year was the inclusion of billions of dollars in military projects, including Future Combat Systems, that aren't directly involved in fighting the wars.

The Pentagon allowed such a broad definition of war-related spending in 2006 that it removed all discipline from the budgeting process, “a very serious problem,” Kosiak said. These and other policies, such as almost total reliance on supplemental spending to fund the wars, are things for President-elect Barack Obama 's administration to examine, he said.

In a time of economic uncertainty, the investment of vast amounts of future resources will require decision-makers to consider difficult trade-offs, the Government Accountability Office reported Monday in a study that pegged the cost of the war on terror since 2001 at $808 billion.

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