KNOXVILLE, TN (AP) -- When the Sunday morning political pundits began talking last year about the tab for the war in Iraq hitting $1 trillion, Rob Simpson sprang from his sofa in indignation. "Why aren't people outraged about this? Why aren't we hearing about it?" Simpson said. And then it came to him: "Nobody knows what a trillion dollars is."
The amount -- $1,000,000,000,000 -- was just too big to comprehend.
So Simpson, 51, decided to embark "on an unusual but intriguing research project" to put the dollars and cents of the war into perspective. He hired some assistants and spent 12 months immersed in economic data and crunching numbers.
The result: a slim but heavily annotated paperback released, "What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq."
WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE WITH OUR WAR MONEY INSTEAD!
- A trillion dollars could provide a free college education for every American who's currently in high school.
- A trillion dollars is more than enough to buy every human being on earth an iPod. Okay, not the sexy new touch version. But a 4GB Nano with video is pretty cool.
- With a trillion dollars, we could cover the cost of enough cancer screenings and vaccinations to save about 100,000 American lives per year.
- $1 trillion could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with gold -- 23.5-karat gold leaf.
- It could pay off every American's credit card.
- America could the double the 663,000 cops on the beat for 32 years.
- It could buy 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses, enough for 43 million Americans.
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD Associated Press Writer
And there's more! Learn more here:
Other ways to spend $1 Trillion
What we could have done with the money website