We've been there roughly 800 days and spent about 300 billion dollars on the effort. At that rate (375 million/day), 10 more years of occupation puts the cost of the war to the US taxpayer at approximately $1.37 trillion dollars.
Currently, US debt stands at 7.5 trillion dollars, and is increasing at a rate of $2 billion/day. The Chinese and Japanese are loaning us 80% of this money, but I am convinced they'll want us to pay it back someday, with interest.
Given all the shortcomings in this country (lack of affordable healthcare for millions, poverty, second-tier educational system, looming deficit in Social Security, loss of high wage jobs to 3rd world countries, loss of manufacturing base, etc) and the fact that we are also committed to building democracy in Afghanistan and there is still North Korea and Iran to deal with, plus our military now seems to be consistently missing recruiting goals, I do wonder what the monetary benefit of a stable democracy in Iraq will be to the US taxpayer.
Might've been easier to answer had we found intercontinental missiles and nuclear warheads in Iraq. But apparently those are in North Korea.
