Afghanistan war annually costs $1 mn per soldier
Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:50:20 GMT
The US burdens an enormous human and financial cost to fight the insurgency in Afghanistan, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs claims.
Gibbs said that it costs about a million dollars per year for each deployed US soldier, beyond the expense of training and maintaining a security force.
Burdened by two wars, the American military already has more than 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and will have to draw on the handful of remaining brigades to carry out Obama's plan, expected to see the deployment of some 34,000 more troops in Afghanistan.
More than 800 American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan, and October was the deadliest month since the start of the war in 2001 with 74 US soldiers killed.
Apart from the human toll, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost 768.8 billion dollars so far and by the end of this fiscal year, the price tag will approach one trillion.
The average monthly cost of Afghan operations comes to more than three billion and will continue to grow as more troops pour in.
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