Receipts for the war in Iraq to will soon be ringing up to $564 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
That’s more than ten times the $50 billion that the Bush administration once predicted before the war started in March 2003.

“It’s worth it,” Bush said last May, when the tab was about $320 billion. “I wouldn’t have spent it if it wasn’t worth it.”

What Could That Money Buy? A college education for about half of the nation’s 17 million high-school-age teenagers; preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old in the country for the next eight years; a year’s stay in an assisted-living facility for about half of the 35 million Americans age 65 or older, Ron Hutcheson with McClatchy Newspapers suggests.
I prefer thinking that it could also buy a lot of research and development for energy independence. That, in turn, could produce a whole new generation of exports for the U.S. economy, improve the environment, enhance education, create jobs, reduce the thirst for imported oil and, perhaps, even spur oil producing nations to crack down on terrorism. It would be an enormous investment in the future with long-lasting returns.