The White House budget office calculated that adding 40,000 troops would cost $40 billion a year. The Pentagon, amusingly, decided to calculate the cost per-troop, instead of a big yearly lump sum, and also their estimate was precisely half what the White House predicted.
But, whoops, one of those Pentagon memos, where they hide the "truth" about things, leaked to the LA Times.
But in a memo early this month, obtained by The Times' Washington bureau, the Pentagon's own comptroller produced an estimate that broke with the customary Defense formula and did include construction and equipment.
That memo said the yearly cost of a 40,000-troop increase would be $30 billion to $35 billion — at least $750,000 a person. An increase of 20,000 would cost $20 billion to $25 billion annually, it said — a per-soldier cost equal to or greater than the White House estimate.
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