Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Our (Their) Priorities

By now, I am sure everyone has seen my cost of war in Iraq banner in my sidebar. What you may not have done is click on it to see how the cost of this war stacks up against the budgets of some other efforts for which this money could have been used.

According to nationalpriorities.org we have spent over 272 billion on Operation Iraqi Liberation. The US Department of Education's budget for 2005 was a mere 57.3 Billion dollars.

As of today, according to this website, instead of paying for this war in which only oil executives and Halliburton have benefited from, we could have done the following:

Hired 4,725,229 public school teachers for one year
Paid for 36,113,976 children to attend a year of Head Start
Provided insurance 163,269,509 children for one year
Given full 4 year, public university scholarships for 13,217,988 kids
Built an additional 2,445,054 public housing units
Fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 11 years
Fully funded world-wide AIDS programs for 27 years
Provided basic immunizations for every child on the planet for the next 90 years


I know, just giving someone money is Socialism, diverting money from the poor and general public so rich people can get richer is Capitalism.

Can anyone give me an example of how this war has made their life better? I know a college scholarship would have made my life better.



Next Post: Why I am a 9/11 Democrat.

7 comments:

Nölff said...

I bet Mikes America can give you an answer in a boring shit storm.

worky said...

we could also pay off a little bit of the $8 trillion national debt!

Toad734 said...

Well theres that too

NewsBlog 5000 said...

If we didn't spend that money over there, there would be mother rapers and father rapers in the streets.

Mike V. said...

boring shit storm from old Mike, plus the use of the word "moonbat" about 27 times..

lilmammal said...

Moonbats! Heh.

But they hate our freedom, Toad, our freedom.

erinberry said...

Of course, didn't you know that since they brought down Saddam Hussein, there's no more terrorism?!? Mission accomplished!