15 billion a month

The ongoing war and occupation in Iraq is costing U.S. taxpayers $15,000,000,000 a month.

Remember, this is the war that was going to pay for itself once all the Iraqi oil got freed up and gas prices would plummet. Whatever happened to that theory, by the way?

I don't have to drive so gas prices don't directly affect me (although indirectly they do when goods are shipped to the stores and they pass along higher energy costs in their prices), but I hear the kvetching from my friends who are paying something like $3 a gallon at the pumps.

But $15 billion a month is astounding. And, of course, that's just what the government is telling us about. It's likely much, much higher, with costs hidden in other agencies (you know, like Rudy did when he shifted the costs of his security detail who accompanied him on his booty calls to the Hamptons with then-mistress, now third wife, Judi Nathan, to the city's loft board).

Not to mention, they just don't even reveal costs like the CIA and other such agencies.

Imagine what that money could do here at home. How many houses could have been rebuilt in New Orleans, the city Bush left to die, with $15 billion a month? How many teachers and cops and firemen and FBI agents and border patrol agents and FDA inspectors could have been hired by the federal government?

Hell, that amount of money could buy about 2,500,000,000 Jack & Cokes a month - even I couldn't drink that much.