Cost of Afghanistan War nears $1T

The war in Afghanistan has cost the United States nearly $1 trillion, according to a report published Monday.
The calculation was by the Financial Times and independent researchers. They found that the war has cost nearly $1 trillion, and that most of that was spent under President Obama, who escalated the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan upon taking office.
{mosads}The war began following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
To put the total in perspective, Congress just passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill funding most of the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year.
The war in Iraq, by contrast, cost the U.S. $1.7 trillion, according to a Costs of War Project conducted by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
The U.S. will have to spend several hundred billion dollars more on Afghanistan, the Financial Times’s report said.
Most U.S. troops will pull out by the end of the year, but 10,000 soldiers will remain in 2015.
Last month, Obama signed a secret order expanding the U.S. role in Afghanistan, increasing the residual force by 1,000. He had originally asked in May for 9,800 troops to stay.
The war in Afghanistan is winding down as the U.S. battles the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The spending bill Congress just passed allocates $64 billion in overseas contingency operations (OCO) funding for the Pentagon, which is considered the “war fund.”
Of that total, Congress has appropriated $5 billion to fight ISIS—slightly less than the White House’s $5.6 billion request.
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