Since 2003 money has been spent on the war in Iraq, but now more funds are being spent in Afghanistan than Iraq as military intervention slowly dies away. However conflict in Afghanistan has started to quicken its pace.
About 1.05 trillion US dollars was approved for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, last month the cost exceeded the permitted one trillion dollars due to US lawmakers approving the fiscal 2010 defense spending bill, including 128 billion dollars used on the two wars through September. Some expenses also included war-related costs incurred by the State Department, like embassy security.
The Iraq war expense added up to a grand spending— approximately 747.3 billion US dollars— since the US led invasion there in 2003. The other 299 billion dollars was for Afghanistan, where the US invaded to fight Al Qaeda and topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. On Sept. 30, a war funding for fiscal 2010 included 72.3 billion dollars for Afghanistan and 64.5 billion dollars for Iraq. This was the first year that Afghanistan was more expensive.
In December, President Obama announced that he was going to add an additional 30,000 more US troops to the Afghan war effort to join 68,000 already there fighting a resurgent Taliban. Obama says he wants to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011, but this will depend in part on conditions on the ground. No deadline for leaving has been set. Estimates of the cost per troop per year in Afghanistan vary from $500,000 to $1 million depending on whether expenditures on troop housing and equipment are included along with pay, food and fuel. Medical costs for the injured and veterans' compensation balloon as time goes on. In Iraq, the U.S. force is supposed to fall to 50,000 by the end of August, from some 115,000 last month. The 50,000 can remain until the end of 2011, under an agreement with Baghdad.
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