It's Easy if You Try Sunday's Washington Post carried an op-ed piece entitled The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More. Take a moment to read it; this is serious subject matter. As the ID tag at the bottom of the piece indicates, it was written by Linda J. Bilmes, a former chief financial officer at the Commerce Department, who teaches at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. Indeed, Prof. Stiglitz is a Nobel prize-winning economist. This is serious pedigree. Bilmes and Stiglitz write "You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home. Some people will scoff at that number, but we've done the math." The piece makes for interesting if depressing reading, but see if the math the authors claim to have done is anywhere in evidence. Of course, Bilmes and Stiglitz aren't seriously suggesting that the U.S. has spent $3 trillion on the war in Iraq. They are trying to suggest when "the costs to our society and economy" are taken into account, the war's real price tag is $3 trillion: "And that's a conservative estimate... We face an economic downturn that's likely to be the worst in more than a quarter-century... seriously exacerbated by reckless war financing." However you feel about the cost of the war in blood and treasure, this would be more than a serious claim -- but, unfortunately, the august authors' argument is seriously flawed.