The invasion of Iraq was launched four years ago with a “shock and awe” display of American military might. As bombs fell, Baghdad’s skyline lit up. Today, US taxpayers are faced with a bill for the war that could also inspire shock and awe. Through Sunday, the war’s cost was $423 billion, according to an online cost metre posted by the National Priorities Project, an advocacy group. The digits on the metre are spinning faster than the electricity metre in your home. Last Wednesday, the bill was $422 billion.

The mounting financial burden is prompting various think-tank experts to reassess the nation’s military and homeland security costs. Reviewing what Congress has approved so far for war spending, Steven Kosiak, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, reckons $370 billion for Iraq, $100 billion for Afghanistan, and $30 billion for homeland security activities. That adds up to $500 billion for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).

Last week President Bush vetoed a $124 billion war-spending bill because it contained timetables for troop withdrawal. Of that amount, some $93 billion was for the Iraq war in fiscal 2007. Bush’s new budget asks for $142 billion to fund war efforts in fiscal 2008. Of this, about $110 billion would be for Iraq, says Kosiak. These numbers are huge. The National Priorities website reckons the money spent on the war could have alternatively paid for more than 20 million four-year scholarships at public universities or 3.7 million public housing units.

Even if the war were to end in days, its costs to taxpayers will drag on for decades. A study by Linda Bilmes, an economist at Harvard University, and Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz last fall estimated total costs could reach $2.2 trillion — “and counting.” That was before the president’s recent “surge” plan. Such calculations are rough and depend on assumptions. Nonetheless, the sum is miles away from the administration’s original estimate that the war would cost $50 billion. Lawrence Lindsay, a White House economic adviser at that time, lost his job after suggesting the war might cost $200 billion.

A task force managed by the Institute for Foreign Policy last month recommended a unified security budget that would pull together spending on offence (military forces), defence (homeland security), and prevention (non-military international engagement). As it is, the proposed $623 billion military budget for fiscal 2008 will mean a higher military bill (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than at any time since World War II.

Robert Hormats, author of The Price of Liberty: Paying for America’s Wars, complains that the Iraq war has been paid for by adding to US foreign debt, not by national sacrifices as has usually happened in the past. He warns that rising entitlement programme costs, such as those for Social Security and Medicare, will make it more difficult for the US to pay for the GWOT in the future, even after the Iraq war has ended. — The Christian Science Monitor