Reply #16: Missing trillions? [View All]

[Kelly Rupert]

Hardly. See, this is what I mean by making sure your attacks are true. When you say that to someone, they can laugh you off, because the entire US GDP is 11.75 trillion, and implying that Rumsfeld had lost at least a quarter of the entire GDP of the nation is ridiculous.

According to the widely-publicized audit, we lost $9 billion dollars.
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/

That is a horrible sum of money. The money we lost in Iraq--that is to say, the money that simply vanished without us even trying to spend it--could have given clean water to every man, woman, and child in the world. We could have offered 56,000 full four-year scholarships to Ivy-League colleges. Instead, absolutely nothing useful has happened with it. That is a valid, powerful attack on this administration, and that's the kind of attacks we should be making--real ones.

Edit: Ah, I see, referring to the Pentagon's poor record-keeping. Never mind.