Your bill for Iraq: $6,666 (not including tip)

Digging into my pocket to pay for some candy that needs to be donated to my kid's school for Halloween, I asked myself what the Iraq war was costing me. It could end up being about $6,666 for me and the 299,999,999 other Americans. That's, ahem, pretty scary.

The Bush administration never promised that the Iraq war would be cheap. Before the invasion, a White House advisor estimated $200 billion, which was lowered by another official to $50-60 million. That was largely based on the fact that the U.S. operations in the 1991 Gulf War cost about $60 billion. In April 2003 one month after the invasion, Bush signed a supplemental appropriation for $79 billion in Iraq spending, and asked for another $87 billion war money (about $66 billion for Iraq) by the end of that year.

Now we have a better idea of the price tag. This week, Bush asked Congress for another $196 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, a $46 billion increase over what he had requested earlier in the year. The annual budget for Iraq has steadily risen every year. The administration may well be on its way to spending more than $2 trillion, the cost of the Iraq war as projected by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and former assistant secretary of Commerce Linda Bilmes last year.

Or, perhaps even more. In September, Bush said in an address to the nation that success in Iraq "will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency." He said that he wanted to establish "an enduring relationship" with Iraqi leaders "in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops." At that rate, my daughter will be paying for the war after she graduates from high school and college. That's pretty frightening, too.

Do-gooders are talking about how well the money could have been used to pay for kids' education, health care, AIDs research, etc. Here's another one. To sweeten efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians to settle their 60-year dispute, Americans could have written a check for every Israeli and Palestinian--17 million people--to the tune of $117,000.

--By Scott MacLeod/Dubai