War on Terror Nears $1 Trillion

Washington's war on terror is about to cost $1 trillion, and even that is just the beginning, Mark Thompson writes in Time. Three recent government reports racked up the bills, showing that long-term costs like veterans health care and interest on loans are yet to come in. The trillion-dollar figure is just a “down payment on the war’s long-term costs,” writes Thompson.

The administration has “fudged the war’s true costs” by borrowing and depending on years of emergency spending, which is subject to less Congressional oversight. President Bush calls the high costs essential to fighting terror, but when the real bill arrives—and easily eclipses the costs of World War I and the Gulf War, even after inflation—Thompson fears that Americans will suffer "sticker shock."
(More War on Terror stories.)