Saturday, February 17, 2007
How Iraq Trillion Could Have Been Spent
it would take almost three decades to spend a trillion dollars at $1,000 per second, and if spending at this rate occurred only during business hours, more than 120 years would be required to dispense the sum.
Another time analogy is illuminating. A million seconds takes approximately 11.5 days to tick by, whereas a billion seconds requires about 32 years. Fully 32,000 years need to pass before a trillion seconds elapse.
Of course, some might argue that the $1 trillion expenditure in Iraq has made us both more secure domestically and more respected internationally than ever before. Perhaps as many as a dozen people agree with Cheney's recent hallucinatory comment that "we've had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes" in Iraq."
At times, it seems that the nightmare and expense of these enormous successes will continue for the next trillion seconds.
