Cost of Iraq War

One trillion dollars is a lot of money. It's the current estimate of the cost of the war in Iraq, although some experts are claiming the true cost could be three times higher.

In an interesting article out today one analyst explored what else America could have done with a trillion dollars. In fact, the analyst got so into the idea he wrote a book called What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq.

Some of his ideas are serious, others not so much, but these are just some of the things we could have done instead:

• Pay off the credit cards of every American.
• Hire 1.9 million new teachers.
• Pave the entire US Interstate system in 23.5K gold leaf.
• Give every high school student in America a free college education (but then how would we coerce them to join the army?).
• Buy a Buick for every senior still driving.
• Double the 663,000 cops we have on the beat for 32 years.
• Build 16.3 million Habitat For Humanity homes; enough for 43 million Americans.
• Buy every single person on a planet an iPod.

The companion web site has a simulator where you can virtually spend a trillion dollars yourself. Plus it has some scary counters that show you just how much money is being wasted.

George W. Bush has claimed that history will be his judge. I think he is right; he will be judged as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States.