Money no object when it comes to wars

[lovuian]

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=335580

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.

But what if we were to try another tack? How about breaking those soaring trillions down into smaller pieces, into mere millions and billions? How much, for instance, does one week of Bush's wars cost?
snip...
The list of weapons and accessories paid for from our $3.5 billion is long and daunting:

$1.5 million for M-4 carbines (about 900 guns per week).

$2.3 million for machine guns (about 170 per week).

$4.3 million for Hellfire missiles (about 50 missiles per week).

$6.9 million for night vision devices (about 2,100 per week).

$10.8 million for fuel per week.

$5 million to store and transport that fuel per week.

$14.8 million for F-18E/F fighter planes per week (one every four weeks).

$23.4 million for ammunition per week.

$30.7 million for Bradley fighting vehicles (10 per week).

And that's only a very partial list. What about the more mundane items?

"Laundries, showers and latrines" cost more than $110,000 per week.

"Parachutes and aerial delivery systems" cost $950,000 per week.

"Runway snow removal and cleaning" costs $132,000 per week.

Flares cost $50,000 per week.
$2.4 million per week for "death gratuities" (payments to families of troops killed in action) and $10.6 million per week in "extra hazard pay".

And Congress has no qualms or Bush of spending this money
its destroying America

[Art_from_Ark]

1. And conservatives like to crow about how Ronald Reagan

supposedly single-handedly brought down the Soviet Union by forcing them to spend so much of their national budget on the military. :crazy: