The Empire 299

Het vermoorden van burgers is peperduur. Wat men allemaal met dat geld had kunnen doen.

'''Boston Globe'' Web Site Calculates Other Uses For $611 Billion Spent on Iraq

By Joe Strupp

NEW YORK Boston.com, the Web site of The Boston Globe, has again taken a unique view of the latest Iraq War funding request, offering a look at what the $611.5 billion that would be spent so far on the war could buy if it was not used for the military operation.The Web site provided a similar assessment in May when the price tag had reached $456 billion. Now with the latest appropriation request set to hike the cost to $611.5 billion, the Web staff has found a new list of would-be uses.Dave Beard, editor of Boston.com, noted in an e-mail that the posting had remained the most popular news item on the Web site for the past two days."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."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003671207