I cannot fathom that we are spending an average of $275 million a day on the war in Iraq. According to the costofwar.com, a website that tracks spending per second, the cost of this war thus far is about $450 billion, and it doesn't look like we are coming home anytime soon.

Jim Lehrer, a nightly newscaster for PBS ran a story about the cost of war in Iraq on May 25, 2007. It had some pretty shocking information that I was surprised to hear, and I thought it might be worth sharing.

According to Linda Bilmes (Harvard University), Paul Solman (Nobel laureate economist) and Joe Stiglitz (former Bill Clinton adviser), the original estimated cost of the war was at first a meek figure even if we withdrew troops today.

The real figure of how much the war will end up costing American's in total is so outrageous it may take you a few minutes to swallow. It has been estimated that the total cost of the war is anywhere between $1 to $2 trillion. What! $1 to $2 trillion? I thought to myself there is no way it will end up costing that much, but, you are going to be surprised, as was I.

Let's run through each cost together, taking into consideration things you may not have before, as I did.

Lets start with equipment being used to fight the war. Equipment decreases in value, gets run down, and is destroyed or never used again when a war is over, and it is not usually replaced or fixed until after the war has ended. This is cost number one, let's call it the cost of equipment.

Next, is the cost that is called 'resetting the military.' This cost includes retraining the troops, training new troops, and bring the military back to the way it was prior to the Iraq war. In other words, getting the military back up to its strenght again - cost number two.

It is important that the Army continues to recruit new troops, and usually people are reluctant to volunteer once a war has begun or ended. So, this is cost number three, increasing bonuses and raising salaries in order to secure an overall recruitment for the Army.

Now let's talk about medical expenses. Remember there is not only medical cost currently, but this cost will continue in the future as well because of future medical treatments and so on. Let's round this figure out to be about $125 billion in total. This is cost number four.

According to Bilmes, "in this war, there are eight wounds in combat for every fatality and another eight injuries and illnesses for people who are over there. So, in total, it's 16 wounded or injured soldiers for every one who is killed in Iraq."

For example, if a solider is shot by friendly fire the Veterans Administration pays about $250,000 a year to care for him. So, for long-term care like these the range is anywhere from $200 to $400 billion, depending how much longer the war in Iraq lasts. Keep in mind that after the Gulf War had ended half of the 200,000 American solders that fought claimed disability. In the Iraq war, triple, even quadruple the amount of troops that have been deployed and how many will file once the war is over.

"Just this year," said Bilmes, "there have been more than 50,000 claims by veterans, disability claims, which involved one or more separate conditions."

Now remember that we haven't multiplied how much each veteran receives in medical expenses and their life expectancy. Once that is figured into the mix it will cost about $850 billion to $1.2 trillion, let's call this expense number five; long-term care cost.

Now, what about the cost of life? Cost number six; the life of a solder. If a fallen soldier had bought the maximum insurance policy before going to the war, the family would receive that plus, $100,000 and there are also a few survivorship benefits for the spouse and children as well. So, according to the math a life lost would cost the government anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000, and with about 3,400 military deaths so far the number keeps growing.

Another cost is the cost to the economy; with oil up to about $40.00 a barrel since the beginning of the war, and other misc things the American people begin to penny-pinch. Every time I pull into a gas station the price is higher than the week before, as I'm sure you all have noticed as well. So, with all of this in mind, this is how the figure $2 trillion has been arrived at, which means every single American household pays about $20,000 towards the war.

Let's take a look at this in another way called 'opportunity cost.' This is what America could have done with this same amount of money.

According to Greg Speeter (The National Priorities Project's), there could have been 3.7 million new housing units built since the war began, the nation's schools could have been rebuilt - each one of them, Social Security could have been fixed for the next 75 years, and lastly, $1 to $2 trillion could have been spent on homeland security...wow, what else could we have done with that money?

It is a fact, that the Iraq war is the second most expensive war in American history, but than again, we are nearly a $14 trillion-a-year economy...