...neither DoD (Defence Department) nor the Congress reliably know how much the war is costing and how appropriated funds are being used or have historical data useful in considering future funding needs.

Government Accountability Office report

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that neither the Defence Department nor Congress had any accurate idea how much the war has cost since the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

It said Congress has appropriated about 430 billion dollars for "war on terror" spending, which includes military operations and reconstruction costs in Iraq, but raised concerns about the way the money was being accounted for.

The GAO said it had already found "numerous problems" with Defence Department "processes for recording Global War on Terror (GWOT) costs". It said that the Pentagon had not done enough since the previous criticism in September to overcome the problems.

It said there was too much use of estimates instead of real cost data and a lack of documentation.

"As a result, neither DoD (Defence Department) nor the Congress reliably know how much the war is costing and how appropriated funds are being used or have historical data useful in considering future funding needs," said the report.

The GAO said that only the Defence Department even tried to formally track "war on terror" costs though money has also been alloted to the State Department and other agencies.

It estimated that up to April this year, the Pentagon has reported costs of about 215 billion dollars for the Iraq war and almost 58 billion dollars for operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and the Philippines.

According to the GAO, US military and diplomatic commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan "will continue for the foreseeable future and are likely to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars."

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse

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