Falling off the $1 trillion cliff. Other ways we could have spent the $$ wasted in Iraq/Afghanistan

[Karmadillo]

The author links to a Facebook application to try to get the word out about the oligarchy's tremendous waste of our resources.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/29/falling-off-the-1-trillion-cliff/

Posted by Robert Greenwald at 6:05 pm
May 29, 2010 21
Falling Off the $1 Trillion Cliff

We fell off an ugly cliff this Sunday. At 10 a.m. on May 30, all of those little cost of war counters that have been furiously spinning away on countless websites crossed the $1 trillion mark. No alarm sounded. No bell rang. But, on the day before Memorial Day, the cost of the wars in cold, hard cash followed the human cost of the Afghanistan war into a new order of magnitude.

Just how much is $1 trillion? Let’s put it into real-world terms. For that amount of money, you could do fantastic, life-changing things like:

•Provide jobs for 1 million music/arts teachers for a year, and
•Provide health care for 1 million children for one year.

And then, just for fun, you could also:

•Buy Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you did all three of these things, you’d still have $925 billion to spare.

<edit>

On June 1, several programs, including extended unemployment benefits, will expire. By the end of the week, 19,400 people will prematurely stop receiving checks, according to data from the Department of Labor. …By the end of the following week, the number of premature unemployment exhaustions will climb to 323,400. The week after that, 903,000. By the end of the month, 1.2 million.

more...

[mynameiswhat]

1. we could pay down the debt.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. ...been energy independent.

:think:

[justabob]

3. that is the one that kills me

With that much money invested into alternatives imagine what we could be looking at now. It just makes me sick.

[Karmadillo]

5. It's tragic. We need to stop letting insane people run our country.

nt

[Greyhound]

8. We were lied into this international crime spree specifically to stop any

progress in this area. We've seemingly forgotten what was going on in 2000 - 2001, but people were already straining against the corporate harness that was intruding into their lives. Al Gore alienated a large part of the base in his incessant pandering to corporate power (remember politician Gore, before he became citizen Gore?) and made the SCOTUS coup possible.

Oh but I forgot, it was all Ralph Nader's fault. BTW, what was the central position of his campaign again?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. 1973-->

[msongs]

4. unfortunately the US government is run by the military and corporations lol nt

[Loge23]

6. ...and for what??

Throw in Vietnam and you now have three (along w/ Iraq & Afghanistan) of the major military/failed empire-building fiascos in American history.
And for what? Did Vietnam really pose a threat to us? Cruise ships are calling on them now for crying out loud! What did those 55,000 American deaths mean?
Iraq, with it's horrendous human loss and uncountable waste of our financial resources has almost faded from public attention.
Now Afghanistan - with it's no-timeline for withdrawal, virtually unwinnable military situation, and well-known reputation as an empire graveyard, now has claimed it's 1,000th American life.
For nothing.

[Karmadillo]

7. Kick

nt

[chill_wind]

9. And it's a double whammy when you look at just the oil consumption

by the military:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8450210&mesg_id=8450384

Hope people will read the whole OP article at the top there, too. It will make the hairs on your neck stand up.

Thank you Karmadillo. Wake up America. WAKE UP.