What’s behind door number 3?

Here's what you could have had instead of the Iraq war

2005.08.07 — Government | War | Economics | by Derek Jensen

Andrew Natsios, the man the Bush administration tapped to head the reconstruction of Iraq claimed on Nightline in 2003 that all we would spend on Iraq was 1.7 billion bucks. That's right, less than 2 billion simoleons and not a penny more. That was laughably low, but even after it became clear that we were in for a long, hard slog, the White House was still low-balling the price tag at 55 billion bananas. We've now penciled in 200 billion clams and, at a cost of several billion per month, are likely to spend another hundred billion before it's over. That's 300 billion flapjacks. At 454 bills per pound (1 gram per bill), that's 6.6 million pounds of $100 bills.

Take a moment to think about what you could have had instead.

I hope I don't get tarred and feathered for suggesting that we're going to spend another $100 billion like John Kerry did when he suggested that the was costing us $200 billion. At the time he said it, we only had budgeted $200 billion and actually spent $120 billion. Jeez, when you're that wrong it's no wonder you lose the campaign. I mean, gosh, you can't count mouney that you only plan to spend, and that Congress has voted to appropriate, right?

The first thing that comes to mind is $300 billion to shore up Social Security. That would pretty much solve the problem, such as it is. If you believe the reasonably-believable reports that Social Security is actually not really in trouble in the foreseeable future, you can start thinking of other things to do with it. Maybe we could, say, nearly eliminate the federal budget deficit, almost balancing the budget. That would go a long way toward keeping our huge national debt in check, wouldn't it?

If you don't care about crap like that, I invite you to imagine a world in which the 300 billion dollars was used to combat AIDS in Africa. Like George Bush said he would do. Of course, he only promised $3 billion a year for five years, so we could have funded his promise for a full century.

If you don't care about keeping Junior's promises for him, imagine what else we could buy. He likes bombs, right? Well, the box-office bomb Gigli reportedly cost $54 million to make and $20 million to advertise and grossed only $6 million. That's a loss of $68 million. George could have funded 4,411 Gigli sequels.

Then again, he could have just distributed $1,000 to every man, woman, and child in America. Not a refund to every tax payer, mind you, but a G to every baby, toddler, kid, teen, youth, adult, senior citizen, homeless junkie, prison convict, and comatose hospital patient in the country, regardless of income tax paid last year.

But what could you, personally, have done with $300 billion? Well, you could have bought 455,235 Ferrari Enzos at $659,000 each. Or, if you prefer to buy American, 2.12 million Ford GTs at $141,000 each, and that's not counting the volume discount you'd surely get.

You could have bought 750 million of the top-o-the-line 60 GB iPods. Or you could have 36.1 million complete Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition DVD sets.

Of course, the Bushies protest, we could have kept the money, but Saddam Hussein would be a free man walking the streets today.

So would 2,000 American and allied soldiers.

f e e d b a c k

Mr.D writes...

You don't understand!!!!

People who speak with ignorance sound just like you. You sound as if you got your information from CBS. The only real way to eliminate any young Arabs from doing more, is to eliminate them. Sounds harsh doesn't it. You might say "well your doing the same thing that they are doing," well yah exept for one thing, i would do it so that you could make your comments on the internet. In other words for your freedom. No one wants to see poeple die, or lose a life to war or anything. Its's funny that you don't realize that these people hate you and would get off on seeing you die. The war would be over if there wasn't so many liberals interfearing with the war. I remember in the war we couldn't shoot at a mosk in iraq, are soldiers died becuase of some stupid mosk, actually I'm wrong, they died of stupid idiots, trying to protect this mosk instead of our soldiers. Don't you undertand that your blood is not worth that of a stupid building.

If you want to talk facts then know the truth about what you write about. If the military could use its full potential intead of being held back the war would have been over two years ago. Believe it or not the more rules the military has to follow more lives will be taken.You can have a thousand poeple die at once or ten thousand die 5 years. You liberals want our soldiers to play peak-a-boo with these murderers and tip toe around. I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ would give the families peace and understanding of why there family members have died and served and saved the lives of there fellow country men. Oh, I protect about 250,000 lives or more every day from these murderous creeps, so don't insult me with your cheap and non factual opinions.

Derek Jensen writes...

The Iraq War was a choice the Bush administration made to further their aim of making the Middle East stable and democratic. Unfortunately, it was poorly justified, badly planned, and a tragic failure because of the administration's own incompetance, not someone else's interference. It was a distraction from the actual war on terrorism being waged in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden lived and planned. Now, all the people in the Middle East who only disliked Americans now hate Americans and have rushed to Iraq to kill them. That's bad diplomacy.

So is blowing up a mosque.

Update:

Turns out that blowing up the wrong mosque does indeed piss off a whole bunch of people, even when it's done by other Muslims.

s i d e b a r