Breaking News: Iraq war Costs US $12Billion Per Month

A US soldier of 3rd Brigade Combat team, 3rd Infantry secures the area as smoke a pall rises from fires in background, during a military operation at Al-leg area about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, on Friday, March 7, 2008. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book. Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion _ or more _ by 2017. Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.