(1)
Now that the estimated cost of the Iraq war has been certified, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, to exceed one trillion dollars, many people are enjoying reminding each other how Paul Wolfowitz had confidently declared that the war would pay for itself.

Except, of course, he never said that. Or not quite that.

What he actually said was that Iraq’s oil revenue would pay for Iraq’s reconstruction.

There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.

If you stopped to think about it, the words that were put into Wolfowitz’s mouth never really made any sense. Because no one — not even in Bush’s administration — would ever have suggested that the U.S. was just going to grab Iraqi oil revenue, and use it to pay for the costs of the war.

Still, that never stopped the story from being widely repeated over the years.

(2)
It is a truism that one trillion dollars is a sum that is extremely hard for ordinary folks to wrap their heads around. So here’s a helpful little calculation to bring home the size of the amount. If you were to take one trillion dollars and divide it among the families of the 3659 American soldiers who have died in Iraq so far, each family would get $273 million.

It’s a heck of a bloody lot of millions.