Lost Opportunity

I try not to think about this too much as it is just too depressing. All of this money(on the Chinese MasterCard BTW) is already down the toilet with nothing to show for it except dead Americans and Iraqis and millions of lives ruined. Iraq is further from "Democracy" than ever and the Iraqi people will hate us forever. So much lost opportunity. So much waste. Such a tragedy.
To add insult to injury, I just turned on CNN in the hotel room and there was Wolf with John Bolton. Bolton was beating the war with Iran drum. It is time for civil disobedience I think.

From the Boston Globe via E&P:

"If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total cost would rise to $611.5 billion, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonprofit research group," the staff stated in an online introduction. "The amount got us wondering: What would $611 billion buy?"

Among the findings, from college tuition to free gasoline -- each posted with an accompanying photo -- staffers revealed the following:

• "U.S. drivers consume approximately 384.7 million gallons of gasoline a day. Retail prices averaged $3.00 a gallon in early November. Breaking it down, $611 billion could buy gasoline for everybody in the United States, for about 530 days."

• "In fiscal 2008, Medicare benefits will total $454 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation summary. The $611 billion in war costs is 17 times the amount vetoed by the president for a $35 billion health."

• "According to World Bank estimates, $54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015, while $30 billion would provide a year of primary education for every child on earth. At the upper range of those estimates, the $611 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world's poor for seven years."