$1.8 Billion Per Week in Iraq

The Iraq War currently costs the United States about $1.8 billion (with a b) per week, it's estimated. 

Total combined expenditures for 2003, 2004 and 2005 were $180 billion, but we're projected to spend more than half that again this year - $94 billion in 2006.  Estimates for 2007 were not provided.  Anyone want to bet they'll go down next year?  Me, either.

Imagine what we could be doing with that money - say, securing our nation's ports, or aiding peaceful democratic change in the Middle East, or improving disaster preparedness, or even just paying down the $8 trillion public debt.

There are about 27 million people in Iraq.  By the end of this year, we will have spent about $274 billion on the war.  We could have sent teams into Iraq to kill Hussein and his family, installed a puppet government by bribing a few generals and officials with $200 million, given $10,000 to every man, woman and child in the country, and still have come out ahead.  Per capita GDP is $3,400, so it would have been a sizable injection of capital into the country.  How popular would the U.S. be in the region if we had done that?

Put another way, if you had wanted to destabilize the Middle East, foment civil war in Iraq and extend Iran's influence in the region, weren't there cheaper ways of doing it?

(Via Susie Madrak.)

Comments

[acm]

there have to have been cheaper ways. but, what the heck, this way was fun -- let's go start another one!!

(sigh.)