cover image 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 the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq

Rob Simpson, . . Hyperion, $9.95 (110pp) ISBN 978-1-4013-2308-0

With acerbic wit and contagious indignation, Simpson examines how the United States could have better spent the trillion dollars allocated to fund the Iraq War. His 50 alternatives mix the satirical with the sincere: paving America's streets with gold, paying off the entire country's credit card debt, providing every human on earth with an iPod, flying all Iraqi citizens to a Major League Baseball game as well as caring for returning veterans, providing free college education for all Americans, rebuilding New Orleans and rectifying Social Security and Medicare. Although Simpson clearly means to entertain, his slim book is also a provocation and call to action—he astutely notes that even a fraction of the trillion dollars could have been spent beefing up woefully understaffed American airport security or developing technologies to massively reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil—measures that would arguably do much in guaranteeing American security. Whatever their political affiliation or support for the war, readers will confront the financial cost of the war and re-examine their government's—and their own—priorities. (July 1)