$350

The Iraq military budget for FY 2005 is coming in at $105B. There are just under 300M people in the U.S. as of January first.

That means that Iraq will cost every American man, woman, and child $350 this year. It will be more once you take into account that we are borrowing the money to pay for it, so we'll all have to pony up for interest, too. At some point, probably after Bush leaves office.

We lost 36 more American soldiers, primarily marines, in Iraq today. This brings the total American soldiers killed in Iraq to 1417. Meanwhile, violence is likely to escalate in the days leading up to the Iraqi election; meanwhile, we've found none of the WMD we were assured were there*; meanwhile, we have stopped searching for WMD altogether; meanwhile, there are reports that we are gathering intel for possible military action against Iran.

Madness.

*Remember when newly-crowned Secretary of State Rice said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"?