War is hell - and hellishly expensive

[bemildred]

War is hell - deadly, dangerous and expensive. But just how expensive is it?

In a recent interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz asserted that the costs of the Iraq war - budgetary, economic and societal - could reach US$5 trillion.

That's a hard number to comprehend. Figuring out how many times $5 trillion would circle the globe (if we took it all in $1 bills) doesn't really help matters much, nor does estimating how many times we could paper over every square inch of Rhode Island with it. The fact that total war costs could buy six trillion donuts for volunteers to the presidential campaigns - assuming a bulk

discount - is impressive in its own way, but not all that meaningful either. In fact, the George W Bush administration's war costs have already moved beyond the human scale of comprehension.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JC08Ak01.html