War numbers

Recently Kerry has been criticizing the war in Iraq saying the US has to date spent over $200 billion on the war effort. Most estimates put the number somewhere in the $80 – $100 billion range. Some liberal estimates claim the war has cost north of [$150 billion](http://costofwar.com/ ).

In search of the real number I ran across an estimate from the Congressional Budge Office that estimates we’ve spent around $93 billion so far on the war, but there seems to be a consensus between liberals and conservatives that in the end the war and reconstruction effort will eventually cost over $200 billion.

I’ve never seen $200 billion dollars. I can’t really comprehend how much money that is. I can imagine a room full of money, but I don’t really understand how much $200 billion is. Is that a lot for a war? I don’t know.

What I do know is that Iraq is a country of roughly 25,375,000 people and a per capita GDP of $1,600 US dollars. Given that Iraq is a fairly small and relatively poor country I wonder if it wouldn’t have been cheaper to just outright buy their loyalty instead of trying to rebuild a government through occupation. Maybe we could have taken $200 billion and divided it equally among the population in return for them allowing us to replace their government. I know that sounds strange, but I don’t know maybe it would have worked. It works out to around $7,880 US per citizen which is the equivalent of about 5 times the average citizens annual salary just for letting us replace a guy they clearly didn’t like in the first place. If I’m an Iraqi that sounds like something I could go along with.