BEIJING, March 16 (Xinhuanet) -- A study says the US war in Iraq has cost 1.7 trillion US dollars with an additional 490 billion US dollars in benefits owed to war veterans. And the cost could grow to more than 6 trillion US dollars over the next four decades including interest.

According to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, the war’s death toll has risen to up to an estimated 189,000, including 134,000 Iraqi civilians. Excluded are indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure.

The costs exclude trillions of dollars in interest the United States could pay over the next 40 years. The report says the interest could amount to about 4 trillion US dollars during that period. The report concludes the United States has gained little from the war while Iraq has been traumatized by it.

Meanwhile, it says the 212 billion US dollars reconstruction effort has been a failure with most of the money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud.

(Source: CNTV.cn)