Way to report what is important CNN! Way to show us "American" news!

Fucking christ, our media sucks ass.

I read that figure as $1.5 Trillion, not Quadrillion, which sounds about right.

But @3, I agree $500K doesn't even come close to the cost in property damage - I don't even know how you can put a dollar figure on the lives lost.

And don't forget that $1.5 trillion is almost all borrowed money--current national debt over $9 trillion with no end in sight--and at the rate we're going the US federal government is gonna implode like a ragged-out Vegas casino. Not that that's a bad thing anymore.

Bush II is truly horrible, but the worst preznit of all time has to be James Buchanan, whose support for slavery and indolent idiocy greatly contributed to the start of the Civil War.

Keep in mind that the Democrats and Republicans have flipped political ideologies over the last 150 years and it all makes sense.

but i get it. people are only willing to stop our government when it starts costing us too much, not just because it might be doing something that is, you know, wrong.

I guess, it still would be a remarkable comparisson to consider how much money 9/11 itself costed us, regardless of the human lives, family relief, etc. etc. and seeing as they haven't even replaced the building yet, I can imagine that THAT number doesn't even come close.

As far as the cost of human life? It falls on deaf ears at this point, I'm not as much of a humanist as I used to be ... the whole song live and let die perfectly applies.

I will give the whole notion of patriotism some credit, at some point you have to define what your group is, what your turf is and what you are willing to defend. The means at which we have chosen (have had chosen for us) is fucking asinine to the umpteenth degree, and it totally degrades and devalues what patriotism should be and of course United States global policy.

oh.

wait.

It was.

Time to end this insane War and get real (e.g. recognize that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are not our allies and only focus on Afghanistan and stop the Iran and Iraq sideshows).

Yep, Charles changed it. There was an extra trio of zeros earlier.

The irony of all this oil foreign policy, is how the hell do we afford any of it? Manufacturing? The US is short on natural resources at this point. We export technology but it sure as hell is not creating jobs for everyone. And if that's all we are going to export, be prepared for the US to truely become a welfare state.

First they leverage boxcutters into the destruction of WTC.

Then WE leverage this into bankrupting out country, alienating the entire Moslem world, and getting involved in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, quagmies all.

And guess what?

Al Qaeda is just as able to use the internet and the world banking system and cell phones etc. to plan and carry out an operation in the USA. They have their safe havens in Wajiristan, not that they really need one anyway.

So THAT is where we get all our oil. Well there and Venezuala ... right? Because I remember something about the US being the eighth largest producer of oil, yet we only use a fraction of it, the majority of that is export.

It's so god damn confusing I should read a book about it. Oil is not just because it fuels our go go devil machines. Its obviously our plastics, our computers, often times our electricity. OUR MEDICAL DEVICES, our outdoor equipment, our vegan shoe products.

And sadly enough our food. 75% of the worlds nitrogen is now fixiated industrially from .... hydrogen which the majority comes from natural gas ... which isn't as bad.

For realz.