'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

What to do with $119.4 billion

The AP wire has a great little story that just came across my transom. It starts by reminding us that, "Congress and President Bush have so far provided $119.4 billion for the war in Iraq." And then, it gives a few examples of what that sum could buy.

Well, in the interests of "fair use" (!) I shan't reproduce the whole story here. But let's just note that that bunch of dough could pay tuition, room, and board to send 748,495 people--nearly the whole population of of Jacksonville, Florida-- to Harvard University for four years.

Or, it could buy a median-price ($174,100) U.S. home for 685,813 people-- slightly more than all the residents of Austin, Texas. One home for EACH of them, man, woman, and child, that is.

I hope your local newspaper carries the whole AP story, with the rest of its truly eye-opening examples.

Here's the thing, though. The story also notes that, "If the $119.4 billion were divided evenly among Iraq's estimated 25 million residents, each would get $4,776. That would be eight times the country's $600 per capita income."

So here's my question:

Where the heck has all that money gone to?

Or, more to the point, What proportion of it ended up in the hands of Halliburton and other private contractors?

And heck, while we're in the realm of statistics, did you know that the entire amount of overseas development aid disbursed by the US in 2001 was only $11.43 billion? (More than $3 billion of that went to well-known impoversished country Israel; so let's say that $8.43 billion went to more truly needy nations.)

If you want a truly obscene window on what $119.4 billion means in international affairs, I just worked out that that sum is greater than the entire year-2001 GDP registered in all of the world's 25 poorest countries put together. Those countries (Gambia through Sierra Leone in the UNDP's Human Development Report 2003) are home to 440 million of God's children.