For those of us who need statistics or enjoy counting beans....

[whistle]

...here is a piece that a friend e-mailed to me last evening:

<snip>
Army Times
JulY 11,2005
The Military
Money goes by in blink of eye

WHAT'S UP:

The cost of the U.S. war in Iraq will be well over $200 billion by the end of the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, with billions more ahead in fiscal seasons to follow.

At the Pentagon's stated current rate of spending for that operation, the cost works out to:
about $1 billion per week,
almost $165 million per day,
$7 million per hour,
a bit more than $120,000 per minute,
and around $2,000 per second.

In comparison, typical service members deployed in Iraq earn $680 per month in deployment and combat pays on top of their regular military compensation.

Single troops get less, typically $430 per month in combat pays.

WHAT'S NEXT:

Having trouble sorting out your billions, millions and quarter-trillions? An anti-war group,

www.projectbillboard.org

has a ticker on its Web site that relentlessly counts the dollars slipping by every second.

The site apparently was built for the last presidential election, because it hasn't been updated much since late October. But its Iraq cost meter, still alive in cyberspace, rolls on, allowing anyone to check in any time to watch the dollars tick away. The total was due to hit $200 billion by early July.

A single service member's $430 in monthly combat pays gets tallied in the blink of an eye - one-fifth of a second.

[Wickerman]

1. great post - nominated

sometimes I admire the editors at AT.

:kick:

[HawkerHurricane]

2. OK, just so everyone knows...

combat pay is in addition to base pay.

Now, I was a senior enlisted with many years of service, but could claim...

2000 a month base
1000 a month housing
900 a month 'sea pay' (for serving shipboard)

I never got 'combat pay' as such...

Now, pay in the Persian Gulf was tax free (and if you served one day of a month, the whole month was untaxed...), and housing pay was also non taxed...

Most of these guys are making less than half of what I made base, and single guys don't get housing, and replace sea pay with combat pay, and you get an idea of what they're take home is.

[whistle]

3. Thanks HawkerHurricane for shining more light on this issue...