A caller on C-SPAN this morning claimed that if you take the entire amount the US Govt. is spending on this war and divide by every man, woman, and child in Iraq and Afghanistan, you get a per capita cost of about $3 million. That sounds awfully high. How many people live in these countries? How much is going to be spent? Another caller said a fairer way to portray the cost of the war would be to divide the amount it costs by the rest of the world's population (that will be safe from terrorism.)
Food for Thought, and Grounds for Further Research.
I'll update this post with some ballpark figures when I get around to looking them up.
UPDATE
The cost of the Iraq war ticker to date is roughly $76 billion. (Iraq alone, not including Afghanistan.) The combined population of Iraq and Afghanistan is about 50 million. So the per capita figure is about $1520. So where did the C-SPAN caller come up with $3 million each?
