Assessing The Full Cost Of War

U.S. Marines help a wounded comrade onto a Black Hawk helicopter, left, during a medevac mission by the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne's Task Force Pegasus, in 2010. (AP)

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. launched a “war on terror.” U.S. troops entered Afghanistan, then Iraq. These wars still continue.

A team of academics from around the country joined Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies to tally the cost of these wars. They estimate: $2.5 trillion as of today, but that figure could climb to nearly $4 trillion. The group also calculated the human and social costs, both in lives lost and the cost of caring for the nearly 100,000 wounded service members.

Guest:

• Catherine Lutz, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies and co-director of the study, “The Costs of War“