The Cost of War

17 Jan 1961

A warning. On 17 January 1961, three days before he left office, President Eisenhower spoke on television from the Oval Office. He said the nation’s arms “must be mighty,” and that it had been “compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” He also warned against “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” and said “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” He named no plot, and he spoke forty years before the wars in this story.

Feb 1998

A declared war. In February 1998 Usama Bin Ladin and Ayman al Zawahiri published what they called a fatwa; the 9/11 Commission says it called for the murder of any American. The Commission adds that Bin Ladin “inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia,” spoke of the suffering of Iraqis under sanctions, and protested U.S. support of Israel. It writes that the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in East Africa were “planned, directed, and executed by al Qaeda, under the direct supervision of Bin Ladin and his chief aides.” These are an enemy’s own stated aims, three years before 2001.

11 Sep 2001

11 September. Nineteen men boarded four flights planning to hijack the planes and turn them into guided missiles. The 9/11 Commission, created by Congress and the President, counted 2,973 dead, the largest loss of life on U.S. soil from a hostile attack in its history. It found that the 19 operatives were funded by al Qaeda, that Bin Ladin was “very much in charge of the operation,” and that the plotters spent between $400,000 and $500,000.

7 Oct 2001

The vote and the strikes. On 14 September the House voted 420 to 1 for its version of a resolution to use force against those responsible; the law was approved on 18 September and names no country. On 7 October President Bush announced strikes on al Qaeda camps and the Taliban’s military, saying demands made more than two weeks earlier had gone unmet: “None of these demands were met.” That is his account; the Taliban’s reply is not in the records read for this story. This story did not read members’ floor speeches, so their own reasons for voting are not here.

1988

Did America make its enemy? A claim heard widely says the U.S. built al Qaeda; this story has no single holder of it to quote. It points to a documented fact: in the 1980s Saudi Arabia and the U.S. sent secret aid, through Pakistan, to Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets. On Bin Ladin and his comrades the 9/11 Commission wrote that they “received little or no assistance from the United States.” He and Abdullah Azzam founded al Qaeda in 1988 as the Soviets began to leave; this story did not set the Commission’s finding against other accounts.

Oct 2001

The purse is open. William Hartung, an arms-industry analyst and advocate for a less militarized foreign policy, writes for the Costs of War Project at Brown, which says it aims at “the fullest possible account” of the costs of “U.S. militarism.” He reports that in October 2001 Boeing executive Harry Stonecipher told the Wall Street Journal “the purse is now open” and that “any member of Congress who doesn’t vote for the funds we need to defend this country will be looking for a new job after next November.” Hartung writes that the Pentagon budget then rose for ten years running. The remark shows what one executive expected; it does not show what Congress or the President intended.

2004

What was said, and what was found. In October 2002 President Bush told Cincinnati that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons,” “is seeking nuclear weapons,” and “has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.” Congress authorized force against “the continuing threat posed by Iraq” (the House voted 296 to 133), and on 19 March 2003 Bush said operations began “to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.”

2004

What was found. The U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group then searched Iraq; its 2004 report, by Charles Duelfer, found no evidence of weapons stocks in 2003, left open that some weapons existed “not of a militarily significant capability,” and said Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq’s weapons capability after sanctions were removed. The 9/11 Commission found reported “friendly contacts” between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin, “no evidence” they became “a collaborative operational relationship,” and none that Iraq cooperated in attacks on the United States.

5 Jun 2008

What the Senate found. In 2008 the Senate Intelligence Committee compared five major speeches, Bush’s Cincinnati speech among them, with the intelligence of the time. It found the chemical weapons statements “substantiated by intelligence information” and the nuclear statements “generally substantiated,” though they “did not convey the substantial disagreements” among analysts; but statements that Iraq and al Qaeda had “a partnership” “were not substantiated,” and statements that Saddam was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists “were contradicted by available intelligence information.” The majority’s own views call the partnership claim “fundamentally misleading”; Vice Chairman Bond and three Republican senators call the report “a partisan exercise” and say “it was the intelligence that was faulty.” The report adds that, where a statement was not substantiated, it “renders no judgment as to why.”

Sep 2021

Two numbers. In March 2021 the Defense Department counted $1.596 trillion of war spending through fiscal year 2020, a count that excludes some classified programs outside the department. In September 2021 Neta Crawford of Boston University, co-director of Brown’s Costs of War Project, counted about $5.8 trillion spent or requested through the 2022 budget request, adding the Pentagon’s base-budget increases, homeland security, State Department costs and interest on war borrowing. With future veterans’ care, which Linda Bilmes’s research puts above $2.2 trillion, her total is about $8 trillion. She writes that “There has been no single U.S. government estimate,” and that President Biden’s “over a trillion dollars” was correct only if one counts what the Pentagon was appropriated for Afghanistan.

2023

The people. The Costs of War Project estimates that over 940,000 people were killed by direct violence in the post-9/11 wars from 2001 to 2023 in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Pakistan, counting civilians and “armed forces on all sides,” more than 432,000 of them civilians; it estimates 3.6 to 3.8 million more died indirectly, an estimate rather than a count. For Afghanistan alone SIGAR counts 2,443 American and 1,144 allied troops killed, at least 66,000 Afghan troops, and more than 48,000 Afghan civilians killed and at least 75,000 injured, “both likely significant underestimations.” Crawford counts 7,040 U.S. military killed in all war zones. This story read no independent count for Iraq.

The case for the spending. The Wartime Contracting Commission, which documented waste, also wrote that contractors “have performed vital tasks in support of U.S. defense, diplomatic, and development objectives” and that the United States “will not be able to conduct large or sustained contingency operations without heavy contractor support.” Lockheed Martin says its F-35 program supports 317,000 jobs and over $79 billion a year for the U.S. economy. The Costs of War Project counts differently: military spending produces an average of 5 jobs per $1 million, against nearly 13 in education and 9 in health care. Each number is its owner’s own count.

2021

Who got the money. William Hartung, an advocate for a less militarized foreign policy, writes that the Pentagon has spent over $14 trillion since 2001, one-third to one-half of it going to contractors, and that $4.4 trillion went on weapons buying and research. He writes that “in recent years” one-quarter to one-third of Pentagon contracts have gone to five firms: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. The base-budget increases, he writes, came “over and above” the $2 trillion in direct war costs. Contracts are revenue, not profit; they pay staff and suppliers, and this story read no profit figure.

2011

Inside the war zone. The Costs of War Project’s Heidi Peltier counted about $108 billion in contracts for work performed in Afghanistan over 20 years, “just a fraction” of the over $14 trillion in Pentagon spending; her figure leaves out U.S.-made goods such as weapons. The Wartime Contracting Commission counted contract and grant spending in Iraq and Afghanistan expected to exceed $206 billion from fiscal 2002 through 2011, and found that 22 contractors took 52 percent of the dollars. KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary until 2007, was the largest, with $40.8 billion. The two counts cover different years, places and agencies.

1992

A career that crossed. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in the early 1990s, then Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 until he resigned in 2000 to campaign for Vice President, a post he held from 2001. Mother Jones reported in 2000 that in 1992 the Pentagon, under his direction, paid Brown & Root Services, a Halliburton company, $3.9 million for a study of how private firms could supply troops, and that the company won a five-year Army logistics contract the same year. Critics such as Public Citizen’s Tom Smith called it a revolving door; an Army spokeswoman said contractors free soldiers “up to do what they are trained to do.” KBR, the unit of the later contracts, carries the same Brown & Root name, but the sources read here do not spell out that corporate lineage.

Mar 2003

The contract. In December 2001 KBR was awarded the Army’s LOGCAP III logistics contract; the Wartime Contracting Commission says the base contract was awarded competitively, with KBR as sole provider, and that task orders then went ten years without competition. In November 2002 an Army command gave KBR a $1.9 million task order to plan repairs to Iraq’s oil industry, which GAO found should have had a written justification for skipping competition. In March 2003 the Army Corps of Engineers gave KBR a sole-source contract to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure, calling it urgent; GAO found it “properly awarded” to “the only contractor DOD had determined was in a position to provide the services” in time, given classified prewar planning. GAO counts nearly $1.4 billion obligated in fiscal 2003; the Commission puts the contract at $2.5 billion.

14 Sep 2003

His answer. In September 2003 Cheney said he had “no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind” and, as vice president, “absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of” contracts led by the Corps of Engineers. Senator Frank Lautenberg said his disclosure forms showed deferred salary from the company, $398,548 while in office by FactCheck.org’s count; his office said he had bought insurance in 2001 against the company failing, and he and his wife had assigned profits from his Halliburton stock options to charity. FactCheck.org, in 2004, found the deferred pay fixed whatever the company earned and “no credible allegation” that he took part in Halliburton matters, and a Congressional Research Service memo reached “no firm conclusion” on whether such pay is a conflict.

14 Sep 2003

The chief of staff. But FactCheck also noted that his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was told in advance of a fall 2002 Halliburton contract (the White House said Libby did not pass it on), and a Time report of an email that a March 2003 contract “has been coordinated w VP’s [Vice President’s] office,” which was unclear; this story read no source showing him deciding any award.

Aug 2011

The waste. Congress created the Commission in 2008. It estimated that at least $31 billion, and possibly as much as $60 billion, was lost: waste of 10 to 20 percent of the $206 billion projected through 2011, and fraud of 5 to 9 percent. For KBR it cited unsupported costs flagged by Pentagon auditors, kickbacks to KBR managers from a Kuwaiti subcontractor whose manager was later convicted, a March 2011 Justice Department false-claims filing, and almost $400 million paid for labor not used. It put responsibility on “Congress, the White House, federal departments, the military services, agency leadership, contractors, and individuals who abuse the system,” and KBR’s own reply is not in the records read here.

Aug 2021

“Spend, spend, spend.” SIGAR’s 2021 report, built on more than 760 interviews, describes “a troubled reconstruction effort that has yielded some success but has also been marked by too many failures,” after $145 billion over 20 years. Writing of the years around 2007, it says that, “Overcorrecting the underresourcing of the first few years,” the Congress “put massive pressure on agencies to spend money as quickly as possible,” that the NSC and the military forced USAID to accept “impossible goals,” and that “the amount of money spent became the main metric for success.” It also says pressure to show progress “distorted accountability systems into spin machines.” Nothing in it ties the spending to a profit motive; the Washington Post published related SIGAR interviews in 2019 as the Afghanistan Papers, which this story did not read.

Sep 2021

The influence. William Hartung, an advocate for a less militarized foreign policy, cites Center for Responsive Politics figures of $2.5 billion in weapons-industry lobbying over two decades and $285 million in campaign contributions since 2001, and a Project on Government Oversight report of 645 instances in 2018 of the top 20 contractors hiring former officials, officers and lawmakers. He is the author of a book titled “The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home,” and writes that making war less profitable “decreases the incentive to go to war.” The same paper says some of the industry’s profits “are widely considered legitimate.” This story read no source that traces a particular war vote to a particular payment.

2021

After Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s 2018 strategy, Hartung reports, “targeted ‘great power rivalry’ as the greatest threat to U.S. security.” Hartung, an advocate for a less militarized foreign policy, writes that “exaggerated estimates of the military challenges posed by China” became the new rationale for high budgets, and that nine of the 12 members of the commission that urged 3 to 5 percent annual growth had ties to the arms industry. The Costs of War Project says official talk of threats from China and Russia is marked by “threat inflation.” Hartung also writes that whether industry funding of think tanks skews their findings “is not always clear.”

19 Dec 2025

The books. In December 2025 the Pentagon failed its eighth audit in a row; audits began in 2018. A failed audit means auditors could not verify the books: in 2024 none of the 28 parts “failed outright,” but in fifteen “there wasn’t enough information to come to a conclusion,” and the main problem was physical assets and property. It is not a finding that money was stolen. The department says it is “committed to resolving its critical issues,” and Congress has set 2028 for a clean audit.

2025

What the record shows. The documents read here show who was paid, how much, and what was wasted: wars counted at $1.6 trillion by the Pentagon’s narrow count through 2020 and about $8 trillion by Crawford’s, five firms with over $2.1 trillion in contracts, tens of billions lost to contract waste and fraud, and public claims about Iraq that went past the intelligence on named points. They do not show that the wars were started for that money, and that is a limit of what was read. None of the bodies quoted here (the 9/11 Commission, the Iraq Survey Group, the Wartime Contracting Commission, SIGAR) was asked why the wars were fought, the Senate committee “renders no judgment as to why,” and no internal record of how the decisions were made was read. So the story cannot say there was a plan, and it cannot say there was none.