For the money the US has spent in fighting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we could have built each citizen of those countries a $300,000 home -- and the powerplants and water facilities they would need for those homes. Makes you wonder if that would have made a better impression on those people...

Heard that on MSNBC, BTW.

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I remember the war in Jugoslavia in 1999.It costed 30 billion dollars app.5 Years later they had managed to raise 3 billion for peacetime reconstruction etc ..

I am not a big US war effort fan ,but the lack of planning for winning the peace has always baffled me.US victory is pretty much a foregone conclusion -but what then ?

I really hope things work out !

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Thats unpossible.

28 million Iraqi's x 300,000 = 8,400,000,000,000 (thats 8.4 trillion)

now

28 million Iraqi's x 30,000 = 840,000,000,000 (840 billion), is much closer to reality (the cost was 673B when I just checked, just for Iraq)

Still, its an interesting point, as 30k is alot of moolah for someone in the 3rd world....

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Another case of the media not being able to do simple math. How could that have gotten past even basic fact checking. Unless it was a pundit who would never expect someone to check.

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Hmmmm...it's also a case of me not doing basic math...damn that's embarrassing...

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When we were kids they would not have made that mistake. SO we trust sometimes when we shouldn't. No biggie.

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Well this is what $30,000 USD will get you in Iraq.

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And this is what $30,000 will get you in the USA.

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Yeah, but you can use it for a Cash-for-Clunkers trade-in!

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That was what he traded his clunker in for!!!

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That was what he traded his clunker in for!!! Interesting concept that cash for clunkers program... Get people who have no money or bad credit to invest in new cars and then when they default have foreclosure and repo's on all the vehicles.

Hey wait a minute... isn't that what happened in the housing market????

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Is that satirical or does a piece of crap ride like that cost US$30,000? In Australia US$30,000 would get you an okay new car or a pretty sweet used car.

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YUP! Exactly. The Congress forced the bankers to lower their standards for giving the morgages (Barney Frank and another Democratic Congressman whose name I can't remember off-hand wrote the legislation) because they claimed the standards were racist. The housing market and other problems the economy has suffered can be tracked back to policies that came into being after the change over in Congress in 2006.

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Sorry guys getting too purely political. I am not trying to stifle comments, I just know that political discussions get heated and causes rifts. Trying hard to prevent that.

Back to the cars. 30k should get you a nice basic new car (including taxes). It would get you a very nice used car.

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Phew! Thanks for the clarification.

Of course I'm more interested in motorcycles and US$30,000 would buy me a very nice bike, new or used. Mmm, wouldn't mind getting me a Triumph Speed Triple or a Buell, but I think I'll have to get a 1000cc Kawasaki in the mean time until my bank balance ios looking a little more healthy.

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I just found a 2004 Jaguar convertible with 24k miles for 27,999. That really surprised me as I believe the 2009 model is in the high 80s.

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Not anymore... Cash for Clunkers has actually taken the good used cars that people like me could afford off the road. they are required to do things to the vehicles 'cashed-in' that when done, they can't even sell spare parts from the engines. I live in an apartment complex that is right in the centre of nearly TWENTY NEW car lots (not counting the various used car lots in the area). And there is another ten less than 10 miles from here heading towards Charlotte!

Our biggest problem has been the over saturation of car dealerships that are having to compete with each other. Usually that would be a good thing since it would keep the prices down... But when it costs more to have the car companies to pay their employees to build cars that will never get sold than to lay them off... well, it's not conductive to keeping prices down.

Back when i could walk, i would take leasurily walks past all of the car dealerships in the area. i'd start by walking out the back of the complex onto Monroe Road, and walk down to the mall, then back up Roosevelt Bld to swing around to the complex. And since they remembered me form when i was a tire recovery & recycling specialist I'd get to talk with them on a regular basis about how business was.

When i walked out to the walmart last month (yes, i walked out there with my forearm crutches... what use to be a 10 minute walk took me nearly two hours... but I WALKED to the walmart and back. i still haven't recovered from the walk, but i did it) the dealerships that had been so successful where no longer 'official' major automotive dealerships holding sales to get rid of all of the vehicles since they had lost their contracts so suddenly.

they told me about the cash for clunkers, and the recquirements they had to do to those vehicles 'traded-in' really broke the mechanics hearts. Because they said they where having to destroy perfectly good engines just to get qualified for the program. and don't get me started on just how upset the salesmen where upset over the requirements over allowing the federal government to 'own' everything on their computers...

one of the dealerships found out what happened to me, and one of the guys offered to get me a used car. but i said no because i know that i will never drive again. while i was there we found out just i'm terrified of getting behind the wheel of a car... i needed to sit down and they opened the drivers side door to let me sit in the car and i tired, i really did. but i had an anxity attack. i think i cried for nearly an hour.

I can't wait till the middle of September, the VA has been able to get me a special psychitrist to help me deal with the PTSD and other problems I now have developed since the accident. i really hope they can help keep me form breaking into tears everytime i see a father holding their babies on TV or look at pictures of me and the boys.

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Very, very nice. Got a spare $28k?

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it looks like a pretty good image of a refugee camp to me..

about the math - if there are 28 000 000 Iraqis - would they need one house each -or would they need one bigger house pr say 5 or 10 people ? Making the 30 000 a head something between 150 000 and 300 000 ? ( but number of houses decrease obviously ? )

Any ways - the fact that it is up for discussion wether or not this bit of the war has been handled well is bad imho .It is kind of like giving up a hard won hill after everything the guys on the ground has suffered to take it ,some planner in an office made mistakes and it is lost again .

A bigger effort and better plan on this would have saved a ton of grief.

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Hence the beauty of a nuclear war - no need to bother with a recovery plan.

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Something so simple isn't done by the oh so swayed masses. Good reality check, Troop.

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Yes someone DID notice that I was referring to the TENT city behind the clunker. I was making a point that $30,000 may not seem like much to the people living in USA or Europe but to the people of wartorn countries like Iraq its a chance to start again.

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Heck, $30k is a lot to me.

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Too right!!!

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$30k is a major fortune to me as well.

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Makes you wonder about a huge financial aid strategy to win a war more effectively would work .. Ok I doubt the 'Allies' in the war against Iraq guessed it would cost so much but even so.

Once the initial military opposition was removed and government deposed - to throw more money at rebuilding and improving services/infrastructure etc rather than over-police (obviously you will need some responsive force there) to win the populace over?

To quote Monty Python.'What have the Romans ever done for us?'

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Simply giving the money would cause hyper inflation.

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Hey lets not forget what happen when the USA actually lost a war... the victors became capitalist just because of all the excession consumer goods left behind. (Vietnam for all the youngsters out there).

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Any government that wants to could toss a little of that "hyper inflation" in my direction.

Actually I think we are all touching upon something fairly basic - I read articles about lottery winners who say "it's not going to change my life" and I want to scream "so why did you buy the ticket?", and people say "oh, if I won a £1M i'd be able to quit my job...." But frankly most of us would need a lot less than £1M to change our lives in a big way - I've thought about this and I figure something in the region of £100K could be life changing for me.

Assuming I wanted to quit my day job (which has the odd fun moment but is essentially not very fulfilling) £100K would take care of the mortgage and all the little debts that build up as you go through life. Actually make it a £150K and my wife could come too! And then I'd still need to work but I could possibly do something I want to do rather than something that keeps a roof over my head - perhaps working for a charity, I used to enjoy doing wine tastings for WaterAid ("turning wine into water" was the catchphrase we used on our advertising for them) and perhaps something for them would be fun.

But as I say - if you have the will then the amount of money to change someone's life neednt be big bucks assuming your definition of life changing is not sitting around a pool for the rest of your life, which I think would bore me to tears in short order.

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Another interesting fact: in the US nearly one third of multi million dollar lottery winners go bankrupt within five years.

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