Peace in Iraq for a few billion more...

While Bush is asking for over $100 billion to further his war efforts (I'm waiting for them to rename the defence department "The Ministry of Peace") I have a suggestion that will only cost a few billion, probably less than their original $6 billion invasion plan.

I say they just go into each town of Iraq and seize, destroy, crush, shred and otherwise remove from the streets every single damned car in the country. The result will be no more freakin' car bombs and more people getting on the streets and getting to know each other. Anyone driving a car is either a terrorist or a soldier - that should make things a bit easier then.

I mean, just how many cars are there in Iraq and how much could they be worth after almost years of war? I'm sure there aren't too many shiny new SUVs except for the ones the occupying powers brought with them - everything else, even if its a few million cars could be taken off the road for a few thousand dollars each - more money than most of the owners will have seen in a long time. That would be a total of billions - even if its tens of billions its still far less than Bush is spending - remember the bare minimum the Iraq war has cost is $500 billion, more realistic estimates are closer to $1 trillion - over $3,000 each per man woman and child in the US (or more than ten times as much per Irai!). Just after the initial invasion I read that US forces were at one point going around with trucks of money at one point compensating families of civilian casualties with a few thousand each, maybe $10,000 if they were lucky, so by comparison buying cars is a good deal.

Okay I admit as Palestine has shown there's plenty of opportunity for suicide bombers to wreck havoc without a car - but you know there's no more chick'n shit leaving a car full of explosives at a market and walking away stuff. You've really got to believe that those 40 virgins are waiting for you in paradise to blow yourself up for it. Or you could just take Uncle Sam's money and buy yourself a nice triple venti latte and enjoy the rest of the day watching TV and drinking beer.

Of course the car companies would never allow systematic genocide of automobiles - even though it would basically be a big subsidy for them since eventually all those people, when peace had broken out, would want to by shiny new gas guzzlers. Hey for a few billion more you could get them all a nice new fuel efficient Prius or heck a bunch of solar panels and some electric cars. What kind of nice utopian paradise would that be - maybe they could send a few virgins over there for paradise on earth, actually if some theories are to be believed all they need are some white raisins. Who'd have thought you could get peace, love and paradise on earth for a few billion and a truck load of raisins...

Stumbled upon

It seems that someone at Stumble Upon has stumbled on this site. While the hundreds of hits it is causing are more than welcome (hey hope you enjoy the visit) I'm perplexed that the StumbleUpon website wont tell me where the link that refers to LDTT is. Maybe its a search feature you only get if you sign up, I can't tell. Even more frustrating my web stats software doesn't tell me the URL either.

Perhaps one of those visitors from StumbleUpon would be kind enough to post a comment with a link to the page where they came from - many thanks.

Update: thanks to those who commented on this post - I'm now less in the dark about StumbleUpon. It seems there must be a lot of people out there using it - now I'm feeling bad that I don't post to this blog more often - truth be told most of my posts go elsewhere these days since I have pretty much lightened up in the last year or so. But once in a while the dark side still gets to me!

PS: Something seems to have gone wrong with blogger - it was showing this post twice so I deleted the one with no comments but now it lists no comments when I publish even though it tells me there are still 4 comments attached to it. Strange - must be a Blogger bug... Sigh.

Common Errors in English Usage

While using the abbreviation "e.g." it occured to me I had no idea of the Latin it was an abbreviation for. Of course I know what the meaning is ("for example") but when Googled for the Latin I came across a definition from this website that is also a book "Common Errors in English Usage. I guess a lot of people confuse "e.g." with "i.e." - I don't, my mother set me straight on that a long time ago. But at least I now know that they stand for "exempli gratia" and "id est". Check out the reams of other common errors, e.g. Dangling and misplaced modifiers or By far and away.

Reinvading Iraq costs more than first time

This article from AlterNet states the budgeted price for the current "surge" in Iraq as $5.6 billion, and that another billion has already been added to the price. That's almost $7 billion right off the bat. Does anyone else find that price shocking? Didn't Bush promise that the original invasion would probably only cost about $6 billion... I mean it was pretty much going to be self financing he told us. Now they add a measly 20,000 troops to hold just Baghdad and it costs a whopping $6.6 billion (if you believe they could stick to budget just once!).

And finally...

As Mickey Rooney said this weekend on 60 minutes, the recruitment policies of the US Army are digging deeper and deeper into the barrel, finding more and more desperate souls to go fight their war. The average American has no interest in playing a part in this NeoCon mis-adventure. In future if America wants to go to war it should be paid for by average Americans and if they wont sign up voluntarily then it must be draft.

Personally I think that is a brilliant idea - there should be a constitutional amendment to require a draft before going into any war, even its a specious "on terrorism" war. I think that will give the US public laser focus on the issues next time a misleader is trying to drag us kicking and screaming into another Iraq.