Salt Lake Tribune: The United States cannot afford the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not in terms of lives and not in terms of treasure. As if to drive this lesson home, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz estimates in a new book that in 2008, the combined wars in Asia will cost the United States about $12 billion a month. Using various assumptions, which he called conservative, Stiglitz projects that the wars will cost the United States between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion by 2017. …