Nobody here likes the Iraq War.
Let's see exactly how bad it's screwing over the country, with the hard numbers. Already much has been said about the four thousand families that have lost something they will never get back. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Wikipedia says that the direct expenses of the Iraq War on the United States government is $845 billion. (For now, I'm ignoring the indirect costs, such as the recession that is the result of the war. I'm going to talk about that later.)
That's enough to give a free ride to just about every single college student in the United States.
Calculations behind the fold.
According to this page, there are approximately 15.9 million college students in the United States.
Dividing the cost of the war by five years in order to get a per-year cost optimal for counting tuition numbers, we learn that the United States is spending $169 billion per year.
Dividing this money by the number of college students, we find that, if it weren't for the Iraq War, we could give $10,628.93 to every single college student in the United States.
In comparison, for an in-state public college, the combined total of tuition, room and board, on average, is $9,953 per year. This means that for the costs of the Iraq War, we could give every single student in the United States a full ride to an in-state public college, and still have over ten billion dollars to spare, and that's not even counting the existing financial aid program. Not to mention the recession making it harder for parents and students to find the money to get to college. Not to mention the four thousand people who will never get to go to college or see their children go to college.
So remember, next time you're posting in a candidate diary about what you will do if your candidate doesn't win.
John McCain wants to continue this for a hundred years. Whatever their faults, neither Democratic candidate will do so.