Al Jazeera provided an interactive breakdown on how much 9/11 has cost  to the American economy in 10 years.

I have outlined it below in short; further down is the longer version with explanation details for each main and sub-category. It is stated that many of these categories are conservative calculations and that many categories are certain to rise in cost.

Note: $5 trillion dollars is equal to 5 million millions.

MEDIA ROOTS- Last year marked the tenth anniversary of America's invasion of Afghanistan, officially making it the longest war in US history. Now that Osama Bin Laden is finally confirmed dead, the federal government's logic of continuing the occupation remains unclear.

Initially, the Bush administration irrationally insisted that any sovereign nation harboring terrorists was itself complicit in "terror" and therefore open for pre-emptive US military action. This rationale is absurd– just because one criminal might be living inside of a particular country doesn't make that entire country guilty of the criminal's crimes.

In 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was quick to tell CNN that US forces had successfully pushed the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of the region, and reports reveal that Osama Bin Laden hadn't even been in Afghanistan since 2001. Additionally, a White House spokesperson recently admitted that there hasn't been a terrorist threat in the country for the last eight years.

So what has the US been doing in Afghanistan for the last decade?

Reports warn of problems at ground zero hub in NYC
By AMY WESTFELDT – 9/30/2008

NEW YORK (AP) — The glittering, steel and glass domed rail hub had seemed for years to be the only thing that was going right at ground zero.

Lately, not so much.

The World Trade Center rail station — a planned architectural masterpiece with steel ribs jutting like a bird's wings from the dome, a retractable skylight and a vast, naturally lit concourse — is currently hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and five years behind schedule.

The delays are creating a domino effect, slowing construction of the Sept. 11 memorial and most other projects on the problem-ridden 16-acre site.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the owners of ground zero and the agency building the hub, is expected to announce another re-design of the project this week along with new cost estimates that put the price tag at around $3 billion, more than $500 million over its original budget.

$24B spent on security in Canada since 9/11

CBC News
Last Updated: Monday, March 24, 2008 | 10:52 AM ET

Canada has spent an extra $24 billion beefing up security measures since the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. soil, CBC News estimates.

The federal government has never revealed the costs of extra security precautions taken after the 2001 attacks, but CBC calculated the multibillion-dollar figure by tallying budgets from various departments and interviewing sources familiar with defence-related spending.

Domestic security accounted for the largest portion of expenditures at around $15 billion. That amount includes costs such as paying domestic airlines to outfit planes with reinforced doors on pilots' cabins and installing high-tech detection scanners at ports and land crossings.

An increase in the military's budget makes up another big chunk of the spending. After subtracting normal yearly increases in place before Sept. 11, the Canadian military received an estimated $9 billion extra since 2002. The annual rate of military spending in the budget has also doubled.