Linda Bilmes

And this was on the basis of what Joe called excessively conservative.

Now, we had estimated at that time that the war would be done by 2015.

So if you look at what actually happened and based on our methodology, it cost between five and six trillion, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars together.

Now, my colleagues at the Brown University Cost of War Organization estimated at eight trillion.

So it's somewhere in that range.

Expensive.

It's expensive.

The greatest rewards always come from the greatest risks.

Oh, I don't think there's any internal conversation up front about how much is the spending limit.

I think the internal conversation is about which weapons, from a tactical perspective, are best to hit which targets.

And from that perspective, the performance of most of the U.S.

weapons systems and the military has gone very well.

I think that the costs, however, are enormous.

And the costs that have been released so far are just the tip of the iceberg.

Okay, so on my model, I model short-term operating costs, medium-term costs, and long-term costs in three different buckets.

Okay.

So let's start with the upfront operating costs.

We're getting a better picture about just how much Operation Epic Fury has cost the US so far.

The Pentagon had released the number that they had spent $11.3 billion in the first week.

But that number is an underestimate because that is based on the historic cost of inventory.