If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total cost would rise to $611.5 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group. The amount got us wondering: What would $611 billion buy?
I can’t even wrap my head around $611 billion. What I find even more disturbing is that this amount, which grows by the day, has been wasted on an illegal and immoral war purchased with lies and propaganda. $611 BILLION of your (and my) tax dollars have been spent on a war that has nothing to do with freedom, our security, the war on terror, or whatever the rational du jour happens to be.
What has our investment purchased to date? Well, outside the senseless sacrifice of nearly 4000 young Americans and the wounding and maiming of thousands more, I’m not certainly anyone could tell you what we have to show for our $611 billion. It’s not as if we’re any safer, or that terrorism has been defeated, or even that our oil supplies are secure and affordable. No, it appears that the sad reality is that our $611 billion has been pissed away like a crack addict on a bender going through the family nest egg.
I could do the math and tell you what this works out to for every man, woman, and child, but I’m already depressed over the staggerinlgy large price tag of this war and how little we have to show for our massive investment. What depresses me even more is the realization that if this war was being prosecuted by a Democratic President he (or she) would have long since been in the well of the Senate defending themself against impeachment charges. For some reason, a Republican President gets a free pass.
Man, we really ARE a nation of (&^%$#@ sheep, aren’t we?
