The price tag for the Iraq War is now estimated at $700 billion in direct costs and perhaps twice that much when indirect expenditures are included. Cost estimates vary - Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz puts the total cost at more than $2 trillion - but let's be conservative and say it's only $1 trillion (in today's dollars)...
- 100 years of funding for the EPA
- 18 years of funding the Department of Education
- 170 years of National Science Foundation
- 200 years of National Cancer Institute
- 28 years of the Department of Homeland Security
- 1,500 years of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration
- A check for $3,000 to every man, woman, and child in the U.S.
- A check for $150 for every person in the word.
Put another way:
It would take almost three decades to spend a trillion dollars at $1,000 per second, and if spending at this rate occurred only during business hours, more than 120 years would be required to dispense the sum.
And, of course...
via J-Walk BlogSome might argue that the $1 trillion expenditure in Iraq has made us both more secure domestically and more respected internationally than ever before. Perhaps as many as a dozen people agree with Cheney's recent hallucinatory comment that "we've had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes in Iraq."
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