I always hear about how the cost of the Iraq war was ‘X” billion dollars, fine, got it.

What I never hear out of anyone is how much it would have cost had we not gone to Iraq. By that I mean there is still a cost associated with having a military. soldiers still get paid whether they are in Iraq or not. Uniforms and equipment still need to be purchased in order to support the military regardless of whether they are in Iraq, or whether they are in Bosnia (which if memory serves, were only supposed to have been deployed there for something like a year).

Let’s say for example you have a choice of renting an apartment at college or living in the dorm. If you live in the dorm (at least when I was in school) the housing money was all paid up front for the year. By living in a dorm you don’t save $800/month on rent. The cost is still there, it is just “hidden” in the cost of college.

How about someone figuring out what the difference is between normal operating cost of a military force and the cost of having the force in Iraq and reporting that number? I suspect that it would be much less and wouldn’t have the same shock value.