The Cost of Iraq

[4gold]

If we had not gone to Iraq, here's what we could have done with that money:

*14 million people could have gotten a free ride at Harvard

*Tuition and fees for the University of Massachusetts-Boston could have been paid for over 53 million years

*We could have eliminated Medicare taxes for a year-and-a-half

*The Boston Red Sox could pay Dice-K 70,000 more years at his current pay

*World starvation could have ended, and every child in every country could have received a primary education for seven years

*We could duplicate the nation's largest public works project 40 times over

*Everyone in America could have gotten free gas for 530 days

*Every car in America could be coverted to ethanol-based nine-times over

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/galle ... war_costs/

How in the world can anyone say that Iraq was worth the costs?

[Homicidal_Cherry53]

My point was rather more limited. This seems to me to be an important story, and is apparently so regarded abroad; why has it not been more widely reported here? Or, in the case of the major networks, newspapers and wire services, why has it not been reported at all?

Bad news from Iraq gets pretty prominent play in the media, does it not? I just feel compelled to wonder: By what journalistic standard is this story not worthy of even a paragraph on page 12?

Good news doesn't draw in as many readers and viewers as bad news. People are much more interested in learning about the next potential Armageddon so they can do something to prevent it than all of the good things that are happening. It also might have something to do with the fact that this is not one specific event. AQI hasn't actually surrendered yet and their defeat has been a very gradual, grass-roots effort. There just isn't one huge event to report on. When the government comes out and says AQI is finished, I'm sure there will be quite a bit of coverage on it, right between two stories on the imminent collapse of the economy.