What $10 Billion a Month will Get You

(Keywords: politics, war, Iraq, the wisdom of bribery )

United Press International reports that the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has reached $10 billion dollars a month - that's billion with a B. "The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said the cost of the conflicts has risen from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006," says UPI.

Here's the thing - how much do you want to bet that if we'd offered Saddam a hundred billion dollars, he would've sold us Iraq? I mean, that's some pretty decent coin. And there wouldn't have been all the killing and dying and blowing stuff up. What would the terrorist recruiting line be? We wouldn't have invaded, we would've bought it fair and square.

And what about the future costs? We'll be dealing with Iraq for years to come. According to Yahoo! News, Condi Rice said yesterday, "Americans must be prepared for violence to continue in Iraq, even after a government is formed. There will be no Iraqi equivalent of V-E Day or V-J Day."

Seriously, we should've just paid him off.

--Wisco