About 290 billion dollars, including 254 billion for military operations, were allocated for the war in fiscal year 2006, which closed on September 30, according to a September 22 report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The Congressional Research Service estimated the cost at 319 billion dollars, representing 73 percent of US spending for the "war on terror" launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Congress has approved 70 billion dollars for the "war on terror" in the 2007 defence budget that includes about 50 billion dollars for the Iraq conflict, bringing the three-and-a-half-year spending over 350 billion dollars.

A Democratic senator said last month that the Defence Department will request an additional 127 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an amount that would bring the cost of the "war on terror" over 500 billion dollars.

The new funding request would make the "war on terror" more expensive for the United States than Washington's spending during the Vietnam War that ended in 1975.

The Congressional Research Service said in a September report that the cost of the war in Iraq rose this year to eight billion dollars a month, compared to 6.4 billion a month last year.