Oh good. The article mentioned Stiglitz's estimate. I'll answer his question about how Stiglitz arrived at that estimate.
Stiglitz thought the Iraq war cost $3 trillion dollars (as of 2008!) because he's an economist and not an accountant. Economists look for indirect costs, opportunity costs, and externalities and try to estimate them, while accountants aren't paid to look past the balance sheet.
So for example, the CBO isn't factoring a lifetime of productive labour and taxes paid by a young person who didn't die on the other side of the world. Stiglitz is.
I don't doubt that the CBO's account is a perfectly accurate summary of budget appropriations made for the Iraq war.
Edit: And I'll add that neither the CBO's ledger nor Stiglitz's estimate account for the costs to the UK and other allies.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
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