Demilitarize the War
posted by hedgehog in Iraq, War! |Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Liberation, the U.S. has spent about $410 billion on the war. The head of the U.S. Government Accountability Office has said it will cost at least $1 trillion. Iraq had 26 million people in it at the beginning. So far, the U.S. has spent about $15,800 per Iraqi. In a country where the per-capita income in 2003 was about $255. The U.S. has spent enough money there that it could have given everyone their per-capita income for each of the last four years and still had enough on hand to keep paying those people their salaries for another 57 years. Meanwhile Iraq would still have functioning industries, farms and infrastructure, which would give people there a much higher quality of life.
If the killing rates found in last year’s Johns Hopkins study have continued, about 730,000 Iraqis have now been killed, along with the UN’s new estimate of 2 million refugees. So to calculate it another way, the U.S. has spent about $562,000 per Iraqi killed. Which is pretty efficient compared to, say, California’s death penalty, which costs the state about $250 million per corpse, according to the LA Times (cited at Death Penalty Focus).
The next-generation U.S. bomber should be outfitted with bomb bays that release $20 bills. I am not joking.
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that goes with this article that just decided that bribery is the best way to beat an insurgency.