The $2 Trillion Nightmare

Isn't fighting terrorism like trying to protect us from lightning strikes?

clipped from www.nytimes.com By BOB HERBERT Published: March 4, 2008 hardly a whisper has been heard about a Congressional hearing in Washington last week The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy. money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers. large opportunities lost because of the money poured into the war. “we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more.” instead is the stuff of nightmares.