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# Putting a price tag on the Iraq war
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/putting-a-price-tag-on-the-iraq-war/
- Published: 2007-06-12T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T01:03:01.000Z
- Author: Kevin Herrera
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless, Homelessness

*Cost of conflicts has a serious local impact*

CITY HALL While there’s no accounting for the loss of human lives, in monetary terms, the war in Iraq is costing us all... big time.

To date, the conflict overseas has cost Santa Monica residents more than $145 million, a figure that increases by $1 every second of every day, according to a Web site that has caught the eyes of city officials looking to approve a budget for the coming fiscal year.

The site, www.costofwar.com, is sponsored by the National Priorities Project, a non-profit research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal spending plans so that taxpayers can better understand how their money is being spent.

During budget discussions last month, City Council member Kevin McKeown referenced the site and asked for city staff to look into the cost of the war for Santa Monicans because he wanted to provide a “sober reflection” on how the war diverts funding that could be used for local services.

The total cost of the war for all Americans is now around $433 billion, according to the Web site.

“This war has sucked Santa Monica dollars away from public safety, education, social services, housing to end homelessness, and every other part of our city budget,” McKeown said.

“There are costs other than fiscal, of course. What about the missing productivity and family support of soldiers pulled out of our community? What about the civil emergency protection we’ve lost with the shipping overseas of California National Guard units? What about the returning veterans who may some day end up on our streets,homeless,like their predecessors from Vietnam?”

Supporters of the war on terror, which includes the conflict in Iraq, said the Web site is trying to draw attention away from the most pressing issue at hand — homeland security and protecting the world against extremists.

City staff did investigate the site at McKeown’s request and prepared a brief report on it, basically stating that the site exists and how it calculates cost.

Finance Director Carol Swindel said a true account of the cost paid by Santa Monicans would be difficult to produce, and would be costly, but the option is there if the council wishes to pursue it. Swindell said the Web site does not provide a real clear picture on the economic impact of the war on Santa Monica, but rather just money spent.

“Looking at the economic impact on Santa Monica, that is a completely different kind of a study than what is presented on the Web site,” Swindell said. “That would be a fairly complex undertaking and would be based on a lot of assumptions.”

The site, which receives about 7,000 hits per day and provides cost comparisons, including how many teachers, scholarships or public housing could have been purchased with the money spent on Iraq, was created to help Americans better understand how much cash the war effort requires to sustain itself, not what its impact is on local economies, said Pemela Schwartz, communications director for the National Priorities Project.

“The numbers are really about enabling people to comprehend the magnitude of the cost and so to say that this dollar figure spent on the war could provide every child with health care for the last four years or every graduating senior a college education, that allows people to better grasp the enormity of the numbers,” Schwartz said. “When you say billions or trillions, that’s hard to comprehend, as opposed to showing consequences of these choices and what that money could have been spent on.”

Schwartz said she agrees with Swindell and others who feel the site does not accurately reflect the true economic impact of the war, and believes the real cost is much higher than what is presented.

The counter only includes military and non-military spending that has been appropriated by Congress since the war in Iraq began. Potential future costs, such as future medical care for soldiers and veterans wounded in the war, are not included.

It also does not account for the war in Iraq being deficit-financed and that taxpayers will need to make additional interest payments on the national debt due to those deficits, said Schwartz.

The total is divided by the number of residents in a particular city to calculate the cost per city.

For Santa Monica, the cost was $145,637,118 as of 4:37 p.m. Monday. For that amount of money,Santa Monica officials could have placed 19,289 children in Head Start; insured 87,207 children for one year; hired 2,523 teachers; built 1,311 units of affordable housing; or offered 7,060 high school seniors scholarships to attend a public university for four years, according to the Web site.

“The National Priorities Project clearly feels that we are not effectively spending our national security dollars,”Schwartz said.“We are in the middle of a failed war that is costing us close to half a trillion dollars already in just immediate, Congressionally allocated war dollars and this is money that could be better spent on our needs at home.”

Sal Russo doesn’t see it that way. Cofounder of Move America Forward, a nonprofit organization that vocally supports the war and America’s troops, Russo feels the U.S. isn’t spending nearly enough money on defense and that no price is to large to pay to protect one’s way of life.

“Our position is that the greatest threat Americans face today is the threat from terrorism and those whose goal is to destroy not only the U.S. but western civilization,” said Russo, chief strategist for the group who began his career in political consulting by serving as a special assistant to Gov. Ronald Reagan.“I think this is a fight for survival, so I don’t think there is an unreasonable cost. You can’t afford to not battle against somebody who wants to destroy you.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/061207-01_01.jpg)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 12, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/061207.pdf?ref=smdp.com)