Will the War Counter Hit $500 Billion Today?

Here's a screen capture of "The War in Iraq Costs" at National Priorities Project frozen at 7:45am on March 4, 2008. Less than five years after the invasion of Iraq, the cost of the war (not including, of course, the immeasurable human cost) will hit half-a-trillion dollars:
You can check the current cost by looking at the sidebar to your right, where I've been running this counter since this blog's birth in 2004, or by going to nationalpriorities.org, where you will find depressing comparisons of what could have been provided to the American people with those discarded dollars (like health care for 135 million people, scholarships for 70 million college students, or almost 10 million public safety officers).
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As soon as I posted this, I drifted over to the Times, where I see that Bob Herbert published a piece this morning called the "The $2 Trillion Nightmare" about how the national debt will increase by that amount just because of George Bush's war of choice, and that the overall costs will be more like $3 trillion, or six times the milestone (or is that millstone?) being achieved today.
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UPDATE 10:55am: The Huffington Post email I received this morning was headlined with Arianna Huffington's piece, "The $3,000,000,000,000 War is a Domestic Issue". This is obviously the issue of the day (but I hope not just an issue for today):

So will John McCain be called to account for the surge, and the rising costs of the continuing occupation the surge has enabled? Not likely. Getting the media to avoid a full accounting of the costs of the war -- both in terms of dollars spent and lives lost or ruined -- was one of the primary goals of the surge. And, in that respect, it has been sadly successful.

The thing about $3,000,000,000,000 is that, at a certain point, it becomes hard to ignore. As the red ink from the approaching recession continues to spill, you can bet the media will be all over the story -- the economy headlined as America's top domestic worry. The question is, will the media connect the dots between the war John McCain loves so much and the economic devastation it's helped cause? The answer could determine who is the next president of the United States.

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UPDATE 4:33pm: Or maybe $3,000,000,000,000 is a conservative estimate. Here's an Aida Edemariam article, "The True Cost of War," and a relevant Steve Bell cartoon, "The Six Trillion Dollar Chimp," from The Guardian.

1/3rd of the Louisiana National Guard and even more of the Mississippi National Guard are fighting Bush's unnecessary war while their states suffer

So the protection of the "Homeland" is shown, like every other platitude from the Bushies, to be just so much, pardon my French, bullshit.
The Times makes the point in an article today that what's going on in New Orleans this week is a Man-Made Disaster - New York Times, 2 Sept 2005:

...one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq. [...] One lasting lesson that has to be drawn from the Gulf Coast's misery is that from now on, the National Guard must be treated as America's most essential homeland security force, not as some kind of military piggy bank for the Pentagon to raid for long-term overseas missions. America clearly needs a larger active-duty Army. It just as clearly needs a homeland-based National Guard that's fully prepared and ready for any domestic emergency.

This blog has been relatively quiet, but I cannot describe how pissed I am this week. I cannot describe how sick I feel that my government will blithely spend hundreds of billions of my tax dollars (and tax dollars of our children) to destroy Baghdad because of a family oil feud betwixt the Bushies and the Husseins, and then will have the nerve to ask for volunteers and donations when it comes to repairing a great American city. How much vital American infrastructure (levees, bridges, roads, mass transit, shelters, alternative energy...) can be built, rebuilt, or maintained by the money being thrown down the fucking rathole that is the Pentagon? What if Donald Rumsfeld (to revive a slogan from the Vietnam years) had to hold a bake sale to build his unnecessary (except as phallus replacements) Cruise® Missiles (named after the movie star) and B-2© Bombers? What if he had to call upon the big hearts of the American people to help out in his crusade to transfer money to subsidiaries of Halliburton? Would you open your wallet to fund the Pentagon's worthwhile activities in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo or the next war in Iran or Syria? Of course you wouldn't. Would you?

Because the Bushies aren't comfortable with any problem that they can't solve with a gun, I have a real fear that they want this signature failure of their "leadership" to turn into a fight against "the looters," because "the looters" are less-than-human and can be dealt with in the way that these neo-Republicans feel most comfortable dealing with the lower classes. But try to imagine that you had lost everything you owned and hadn't had anything to eat or drink in days and were being given no aid or shelter or information or means of egress by your government. Would you have any hesitation in stealing food for yourself or your family? Would you be feeling more than a little anger at the authorities? Ask yourself if this anarchy is in anyone's political interest.

You know that Karl Rove & Karen Hughes are working hard at this moment to make sure that their understanding & caring boss will have a suitable folksy photo opportunity somewhere in the disaster area today or tomorrow to show how understanding & caring & kinder & gentler he really really is. But let's not forget the real story of this week when they try to shove their images down our throats. Remember that earlier this week their boss was on vacation and at political fundraisers and comparing his dirty little illegal war to World War II, and himself to FDR, while New Orleans sank.

true blue liberal