but universal health care would cost too much....
Report: War costing US $12B a month
WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.
The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.
For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.
The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.
The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.
[more at link]
I dunno, Louie. What do you suppose we could buy with a bit over 16 MILLION DOLLARS EVERY FREAKING HOUR.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the US, from a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953.