All kinds of self-styled war economics experts are preaching at Liveleak predicting how the war in Iraq will allegedly "bankrupt" the American economy.

I decided that in order to deal with this question I might compare the cost of the occupation in Iraq with the cost of the American participation in WWII.

As you can imagine, WWII, being a truly global war, was extraordinarily expensive. In the later stages of WWII USA was building one escort aircraft carrier per week! The Americans constructed approximately 50 thousand tanks and a comparable number of aircraft.

Wiki Answers has some figures...I have no idea if they are reliable...if you can come up with a better source by all means post a comment.

Adjusted for inflation or converted to today's dollars Americans paid over 5 trillion dollars for their participation in WWII. For those who are slightly math-challenged, 1 trillion dollars is one thousand billion.

The cost of the Iraq war, up to March 2008, has been half a trillion dollars. The most pessimistic projections estimate the final cost of Iraq at around 1 trillion or 1/5 cost of WWII.

What's most peculiar about the American WWII expenses is that back then the American economy was still recovering from a major depression that had lasted a decade. Because of the expenditures and hardships of WWII Americans had to suffer rationing of consumer goods and even grow their own vegetables to save money, but if anything the economy picked up the pace after the war and a period of great prosperity followed.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_did_World_War_2_cost