What could you buy for $3,600?

In his blog on Aug. 30, David Sirota wondered how much the war in Iraq has cost us (in dollars) in the eight Rocky Mountain West states. His answer:

About $24 billion, when you add up the numbers from a new report by the nonpartisan National Priorities Project that is being released locally in Colorado today by the Colorado Progressive Coalition.

Let's put that $24 billion number into context. Since the war started, that's about $452 million a month, or $14.5 million a day sapped out of this 8-state region. Or, if you like your numbers more granular, it's about $604,166 an hour every hour since the war started, or about $10,000 every single minute since the war started, or about $166 every second since the war started - again, just from these 8 Mountain West states.

Think of it in per capita terms. There are about 6.7 million individual households in the 8-state Intermountain West. So, every household here has coughed up about $3,600 for the war. That's about $900 a year, or $67 a month taken by the Bush administration from every household in the region and thrown into Iraq.

So $67 a month for Iraq? That's exactly $67 too much for this Wyoming peacenik.