$12 Billion a month, and that is not a typo

Report: Wars Cost U.S. $12 Billion a Month July 10, 2007 - 8:54am By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - 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. (WTOP)

File this under "Hello, is this thing on?"

$12 Billion (that is a B folks and not a typo). That is 12,000,000,000 dollars. Or, at the minimum wage here in Virginia of $5.15 an hour, that is 2,330,097,087 hours of labour. Put it another way. At a standard 40 hour work week, 52 weeks a year (a total of 2080 hours a year), that comes out to roughly 1.1 million years of labour for a single individual.

Assume (for a minute) that the initial invading US force of 120,000 troop made minimum wage (they don't but it give us some numbers), it still calculates out to roughly 19,000 years of service paid for. The numbers are staggering and that is the amount being spent per month. Now some of it is for missiles and munitions that cost $1 million a shot. You can debate the value return proposition on your own time. I think it is out of line. It also pays for new equipment (aircraft and ground assault). Again, you can debate the value proposition. The report indicates that costs are primarily for equipment replacement. If you have ever seen the Lord of War then you can understand my skepticism about the need for equipment. I am not saying some is needed (I am in favor of making sure the troops have what they need to do their jobs. I also know they are not getting what they need in favor of million dollar missiles they may not need in a theater defense strategy that has yet to successfully shoot down a single missile...but that is for another time).

Twelve billion dollars a month is a lot of money people. It is money this administration does not have now, nor will have anytime soon. Our great grandchildren will still be paying this debt, assuming that the governments the United States is fighting to prop up do not decide it is in their best interest to cash in their IOUs instead. Want to know how bad it is? The Debt Clock is ticking. Current estimates are that each citizen (that's all of us at an estimated 300 million US citizens) will owe $29,000. Or, to put it in perspective, that is almost three years gross salary for those making minimum wage.

If the numbers have not numbed you yet (and I started getting confused. I had to look up the definition of a billion, I was afraid I had slipped a zero somewhere), consider this: The infrastructure (as I have reported several times) in the United States is in such bad shape that a good storm, not even a big one, just a really good Nor' Easter could decimate the power grid for decades.

How about the roads? They are so over utilized that in many cases, the bridges are beyond their natural life, yet there is no money to pay for their repair.

Education? We all agree a good education is important, yet the allocation for education, as proposed by President Bush in 2006 was only $56 billion dollars, down a percent from the year before (Washington Post). Or, about 5 months of spending on Iraq.

How about Homeland Security? Everyone thinks that is important, right. Even the President tries to scare us into believing that he is concerned about the security of the United States. For fiscal 2005, the Department of Homeland Security's budget was $40.2 billion, or $16 billion less than the 2006 Department of Education's budget. A paltry four months of Iraq spending. And in FY07, it only went up a billion! No wonder CNN reported that the Senate (and others) have attacked the President for his empty rhetoric on security. The United State is spending MORE on education than it is on Homeland Security but less than it is spending a quarter on Iraq.

Is anyone else upset by this?