Saw this in my local St. Petersburg Times quoting the New York Times. Does that make it a copy of a copy? Anyway the message isn't faded or blurred but pretty stark. It details what the money that is or will be spent on Iraq will buy. Worth a look.
What a trillion dollars will buy
Writing for the New York Times Economix column, David Leonhardt worked out the cost of the war in Iraq – which he estimates to be $1.2 trillion – and tries to put that number in context. An excerpt:
The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it form any other big number. Forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. For starters, an unprecedented public health campaign – a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.
Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. Turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.
The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place – better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation – could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur. All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:
The war in Iraq.