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August 02, 2007

Bridges or wars? What exactly is our "national interests"?

A comment by an expert on bridges today on NPR's Talk of the Nation today caught my interest. Paul Thomson was talking about how many bridges in the United States right now are considered to have compromised strutural integrity and how much it would cost to replace them. The price tag: $20 billion.

The cost to American taxpayers of the Iraqi Occupation is running roughly $2 billion per week. That means that the estimated total cost of replacing every structurally compromised bridge in the nation is equal to a mere 10 weeks of what we're dumping into W's Folly... er... the Iraqi Occupation.

Mind you, that money is already there. No new taxes by any governmental entity needed. We've paid for, or will pay for those bridges many times over. About 35 times over by my count - $20 billion X 35 = $700 billion. But all we have to show for it is body bags, post-traumatic stress disorder, disfigured/crippled bodies and a whole new playground for Al Queda.

Considering how crucial big bridges are to our entire economy I ask you which expenditure would have best served our national interests: Iraq or critical bridges in America?

Okay... I just saw this new AP report citing substantially higher figures for dealing with all those structurally-challenged bridges - $188 billion rather than the $20 billion figure suggested by Mr. Thomas. But even so that's less than two of the current 4+ years we've been in Iraq. The projected direct total costs of W's Folly still overwhelms even this much higher price tag for bridge repair: $700B - $188B = $512 BILLION dollars.

Posted by Kevin at August 2, 2007 08:41 PM