Dear Mr. President,
I know you’re a busy man, dodging subpoenas with laughable arguments of executive privilege and all, but if I may have your attention it appears you need a refresher in some grade-school math.
Lets start with the current cost of the Iraq war:
As of 5pm Eastern, the cost of the war is over 443 billion dollars.
$443,000,000,000.00
[4.43 X 10 ^ 11]
The website actually has the number running in real time. It’s quite staggering to watch those zeros pile on.
Considering we are the most powerful nation in the world, you would think that the most powerful man in the world would use that authority to try to make our country and the world a better place, especially with all of our wealth. But instead we’re paying for a war. How else could we have used that money, Mr. Bush?
We could have given every federal employee a raise, in an effort to draw talent, raise the morale that you’ve squandered and make their lives easier.
Total Number of civilian federal employees (without the post office): 1,767,000
Total number of postal employees: 700,000
Total number of military personnel: 1,366,000
Total: 1,767,000 + 700,000 + 1,366,000 = 3,833,000
Cost of the war: $443,000,000,000.00
Four hundred, forty-three billion dollars divided by three million, eight hundred and thirty-three thousand equals: $115,575.27.
Instead of this bloodbath, you could have paid every federal employee a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus for their hard work.
Since we’re on the subject, let’s reflect on what Columbia and Harvard economists were saying about the total economic impact of this war in January of last year. Once you factor in:
long-term healthcare for wounded US veterans, rebuilding a worn-down military, and accounting for other unforeseen bills and economic losses.
They concluded the cost of the war to be two trillion dollars.
$2,000,000,000,000.00
2.00 X 10 ^16
Perhaps that money would be better spent?
Or, as another idea, you could pay these people to get another job:
U.S. conventional arms exports: $5,453,000,000.00.
You could pay them twice and still have money for ice cream.
Hell, you could just given Haliburton their blood money and saved us the grief:
Haliburton Gross Profit from 2006: $3,870,000,000.00
Maybe you could have funded Universal Healthcare and protected 40,000,000 uninsured people from murder-by-spreadsheet?
Estimated cost for universal healthcare: 34-69 Billion.
You could buy ten universal healthcares for what you’re paying in Iraq. Sounds like a deal to me!
Maybe you could have fed the world’s starving?
Estimated cost to reduce world hunger by half: 24 Billion.
Apparently your "administration" thinks that the sizable percentage of my paycheck I give to the Federal Government is not supposed to give anything back. Is this what I’m paying for?
Next lesson: the cost of human life.
Cheers,
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