How we spend our dollars

Mithras puts our expenditures in Iraq in perspective.

We could have sent teams into Iraq to kill Hussein and his family, installed a puppet government by bribing a few generals and officials with $200 million, given $10,000 to every man, woman and child in the country, and still have come out ahead. Per capita GDP is $3,400, so it would have been a sizable injection of capital into the country. How popular would the U.S. be in the region if we had done that?

I can barely conceive of $1.8 billion, let alone imagine hemorraging that much away every week. And for what again?

[Clearly, what we need is a second war.]