Costly cakewalk.

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Kenneth Pollack, former Director of Persian Gulf Affairs for the National Security Council, said, "It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars." Luckily for him, stoning false prophets went out of fashion some time back. For far from the billions Pollack dismissed, the war could end up costing American taxpayers closer to $3 trillion--and as much as $5 trillion.

In their new book, Harvard's Linda Bilmes and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimate the "running cost" of the Iraq War at $12.5 billion per month--up from $4.4 billion in 2003. That figure rises to $25 billion per month if debt service and veterans' care are factored in. Iraq is already the second most expensive war in history, trailing only World War II.

Of course the Bush administration disputes these figures. (Recall that it fired economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey for saying that the war would cost up to $200 billion.) Neither will it consider the possibility that our Mideast adventure might have anything to do with the looming recession. But Bilmes and Stiglitz plausibly link the war to both the credit crunch and the spiking cost of oil, up from $27 per barrel when we invaded to nearly $110.

"Something like $50 billion," Don Rumsfeld predicted when asked to estimate the war's bottom line. That was many zeroes--and priceless lost lives--ago. And the meter is still running.