How we went wrong

The Iraq war seems no closer to resolution today than when it began five years ago. The daily stories of death, setbacks and gains bleed together like a list of mayhem on a police blotter, rarely jolting us anymore from our safe slumber back home. Two new books try to do just that by tallying the war's costs from these daily ledgers. Although each has a different focus, both accountings draw the same picture of hopelessness.

The most enlightening is "The Three Trillion Dollar War," by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes. They matter-of-factly dissect the staggering monetary cost of the war and the human devastation behind the ever-increasing bill. In "Defeat," Jonathan Steele uses the region's history and his own extensive reporting on the ground for the Guardian to provide ammunition for his thesis, that "the occupation was flawed from the start."

Both books are deeply critical of the rationale for going to war and the way it is being waged. But Stiglitz and Bilmes focus on a track less worn than Steele's. They follow the money, ferreting out exactly how it was spent, explaining how we'll be paying the bill -- one they calculate to be at least $3 trillion -- for decades to come and suggesting where all that money could have been used more effectively.

For instance, $3 trillion is enough to provide the nation's 8.3 million uninsured children with health coverage for about 18 years. It is worth noting that $3 trillion is their "excessively conservative" estimate of the war's total cost when all is said and done.

"The Three Trillion Dollar War" isn't likely to be an Oprah Book Club selection -- its clinical prose and abundant lists don't make for a leisurely read. But its statistics are a damning indictment of how the war has been conducted and a wake-up call for American taxpayers, who for the most part have remained untouched by a conflict that churns through money and lives on a daily basis. Borrowing the phrase "there is no free lunch," Stiglitz and Blimes describe how hefty the bill will become if we don't change course.

They note that the United States has been in Iraq more than a year longer than it fought World War II, and that the "cost of direct U.S. military operations -- not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans -- already exceeds the cost of the twelve-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War."