As of this writing, the war in Iraq has claimed a total of 3,024 American lives. That is a modest cost when compared to the number of Iraqis who have died in the conflict. According to the United Nations, “more than 34,000 Iraqis were killed in violence last year” alone! And the projected economic cost of the war? Well, that’s the sort of figure that keeps a true fiscal conservative up at night and ought to give every American pause, if not dyspepsia. According to David Leonhardt of the New York Times, the total estimated cost of the war—and this is one of the more conservative estimates, by the way—is a mind-boggling 1.2 trillion dollars…
The human mind isn’t very well equipped to make sense of a figure like $1.2 trillion. We don’t deal with a trillion of anything in our daily lives, and so when we come across such a big number, it is hard to distinguish it from any other big number. Millions, billions, a trillion — they all start to sound the same.
The way to come to grips with $1.2 trillion is to forget about the number itself and think instead about what you could buy with the money. When you do that, a trillion stops sounding anything like millions or billions.
For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.
Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.
The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.
All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:
The war in Iraq. [full text]
Kmareka.com 
i don’t know whether to laugh or cry. we are funding job creation and clinic building in iraq while our own citizens are jobless and going without medical care.
and i would gladly continue to pay out if we were actually helping people and buiding democracy, but you can’t build a democracy in a war zone, and our troops are building things today that are torn down tomorrow.