More borrowing and spending than for any war except World War II, coupled with far less accountability.

That’s the verdict on the Bush administration’s spending policies for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, laid out in stark detail in a Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments study released Monday.

Even with a budget-crushing $1.7 trillion projected cost for the global war on terrorism through 2018, the military research institute’s estimate was conservative, said Steven Kosiak, the center’s vice president for budget studies.

Among the center’s major findings: the global war on terrorism has cost more, in inflation-adjusted dollars (though not as a percentage of GDP), than any other war in history except World War II; military operations and related costs are being funded almost entirely through “emergency appropriations,” making oversight of spending nearly impossible; and the biggest reason for the growth in the budget last year was the inclusion of billions of dollars in military projects, including Future Combat Systems, that aren’t directly involved in fighting the wars.

The Pentagon allowed such a broad definition of war-related spending in 2006 that it removed all discipline from the budgeting process, “a very serious problem,” Kosiak said. These and other policies, such as almost total reliance on supplemental spending to fund the wars, are things for President-elect Barack Obama ’s administration to examine, he said.

In a time of economic uncertainty, the investment of vast amounts of future resources will require decision-makers to consider difficult trade-offs, the Government Accountability Office reported Monday in a study that pegged the cost of the war on terror since 2001 at $808 billion.

Running the Numbers

Even with proposed draw-down of 60-80 percent of the estimated 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the total price tag of the global war on terrorism could run about $1.3 to $1.7 trillion in the next 10 years — a figure that leaves out an increase in military personnel being sought by the Defense Department, Kosiak said.

The addition of 92,000 Army soldiers and Marines by 2013 will be counted in the Pentagon’s non-war budget, even though the increase is being sought to relieve the stress on National Guard and Reserve units that have served multiple tours.

The proposed addition of 65,000 Army personnel and 27,000 Marines could cost $15 billion a year, defense analysts have said.

The cost estimate doesn’t factor in the proposed shift of forces from Iraq to Afghanistan that Obama has said he supports, Kosiak said. In projecting the cost into the future, the center assumed the ratio of troops in the two countries would remain the same, about 4 to 1 in favor of Iraq; however, the logistical problems posed by Afghanistan’s rough terrain make fighting there more costly on a per-soldier basis, Kosiak said.

Although the Iraq War alone is more expensive than Korea and Vietnam, current spending is less as a percentage of the gross domestic product than it has been in previous conflicts, he said; using that comparison, spending was 38 percent of the GDP in World War II, 14 percent in Korea, 9 percent in Vietnam, and it stands at about 5 percent today. But budgeting should be done according to need, not a fixed percentage of GDP, he said. Last December, Republican Rep. Trent Franks , R-Ariz., and Sen. Elizabeth Dole , R-N.C., introduced a joint resolution (H J Res 67, S J Res 26) that would require a minimal defense budget equal to 4 percent of GDP.

The report drew on analyses of the Defense Department, Congressional Research Service, and the Congressional Budget Office, breaking down costs of U.S. military operations since 2001: the $904 billion (in fiscal year 2008 dollars) spent to date includes $816 billion for operations, $40 billion for training and equipping Iraq and Afghan security forces, $45 billion reconstruction assistance, and $3 billion for veterans’ benefits.