US expenditure per soldier per year in Iraq

"UN peacekeeping operations themselves do add around $8 billion a year on top of the base budget (of which the U.S. provides around $2.2 billion). Still that’s only about the same as the defense budget of Singapore or the Netherlands. Or compare the $8 billion global price of these operations with an estimate of the annual cost of air conditioning for U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20 billion (it turns out it takes a lot of fuel to air-condition a tent). For less than one-half the cost of keeping those U.S. troops cool, the UN supports 15 peacekeeping operations from Mali to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Lebanon and Pakistan, involving 83,000 soldiers in all. One big reason for the cost effectiveness of UN blue-helmets is that peacekeeping forces (overwhelmingly from developing countries) are supplied at bargain-basement prices: a little more than $12,000 a head annually. The U.S. spent about $800,000 per year (PDF)—60 times as much— per soldier in Iraq." (thanks Laure)