Iraq War
A photograph is displayed on a pair of combat boots that are part of the 'Eyes Wide Open' exhibit in front of San Francisco City Hall on March 19, 2012 in San Francisco, California. The Eyes Wide Open exhibition includes a pair of boots for every one of the 481 California servicemen and women who died in the Iraq war. Getty Images

US military operations in Iraq have so far cost approximately £337 million ($560 million), said Pentagon in a statement on Friday (29 August).

Pentagon's Press Secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, has said that the average daily cost of the Iraq war, including the airstrikes and surveillance flights, is around £4.5 million ($7.5 million).

The rising war costs are being paid from the Pentagon's 2014 overseas contingency fund, said Kirby.

However, if the war intensifies in Iraq, Pentagon officials said they will have to reassess next year's budget requests to Congress.

While US President Barack Obama has not confirmed whether the Iraq war will be extended to include Islamic State targets in Syria, critics are already fuming on the weighty bill for US taxpayers.

Iraq War and the Human Factor

A CBS News/New York Times poll has revealed that only 18 per cent of Americans feel the outcome of the war in Iraq was worth the loss of American lives and other costs involved in waging the Iraq war.

This was the lowest percentage recorded ever in CBS News polls.

You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities but you cannot point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States.
- Iraq's Acting Interior Minister, 2013

While it's refreshing to see Pentagon release figures on the cost of the Iraq war, the wait has been long with 70 per cent of the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008 been funded with emergency or "off the books" expenses –the Pentagon's ticket to unchecked spending.

And there are more dirty secrets to the Iraq war –Iraqi officials can't point out a single complete US project in Iraq during the course of the occupation.

"You can fly in a helicopter around Baghdad or other cities but you cannot point a finger at a single project that was built and completed by the United States," said Iraq's acting interior minister to Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction last year.

Above all the monetary and political lies are the human rights violations committed during the Iraq War, including the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse between 2003 and 2004.

Some Twitterers are quick to point out other worthy ways of spending the billions of dollars lost in wars.

Iraq Human rights