$400 big ones

So, I've read an estimate today that put the cost of the Iraq war at 400 billion dollars. That's a large sum, OK, but hard for me to understand. I know a B-2 bomber costs the taxpayers $2bln, so I guess we could've spent all that dough by building 20 B-2 bombers and crashing them into the ground... actually, that would be kinda neat! And, if Baghdad happened to be the location of those multiple crashes, and if those bombers were carrying nukes, we would've achieved the same exact result as what we have now. But I digress.

To come up with a better way of understanding that sum, let's take the population of US, and divide it into $400bln. If my math skills are holding up OK, that would be way over $1000 per person.

So, next time you're thinking about buying that something that looks nice but costs just a little too much, just remember the $1000 that you could've had...