One of the colossal travesties in human history. Think of all the things that 1 trillion dollars could have bought for Americans (or anyone else for that matter). Instead, we're paying all that money to have people get killed, and for no tangible gain, while losing our prestige in the world and alienating friend and foe alike.

If we make it another century or two, history will be aghast.

Talk about a non sequitur -- it's reminiscent of something first heard in elementary school:

"Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?"

"A" has nothing to do with "B", just as the cost of the war in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with the price tag attached to the 9/11 attacks. Write this on a White House blackboard 100 times, Mr. Snow: "IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE 9/11 ATTACKS!"

This again reminds us all of the lost opportunity to deal with the REAL culprits behind 9/11 who were holed up in Afghanistan. Losing focus on Afghanistan after Dubya's war of choice was launched in Iraq is inexcusable, and has allowed our real enemies to revive and spread deeply into Pakistan and beyond.

Way to go, Dubya -- great work. George Will famously commented that it really didn't matter too much who is elected president, because there's so much inertia in the system that no one can do too much damage in one or even two terms. Goes to show that one George can be just as wrong as another -- Mr. Will obviously can't have imagined a president like Dubya. It will probably take two or three terms to begin undoing the Current Occupant's damage to our country and the world.

The Political Poet called it first - the world's first Trillion Dollar War! Our President may yet prove the most expensive hit-man in history!

it's estimated that the aftershocks of that could have cost up to $1 trillion.

Estimated by who? Source please, Mr. Snowjob?

...sorry for taking the savior-I-don't-believe-in, in vain. But..CHRIST.

It's stuff like this that convinces me that:

A) The Bush administration has never been talking to more than half the country.

B) That they are convinced the half of the country they *do* talk to is dumb as dirt..

C) This administration would rather lie than tell the truth at any point, about any subject.

A trillion dollars. We could have had a pure single-payer national health care system for a lot less than that. Simply expand Medicare to cover everyone, with reasonable adjustment to compensation amounts to doctors and hospitals. A trillion bucks would have paid for years' worth. We could have booted the insurance industry out of the business entirely, and set up a beautiful single-payer system. The money we pay insurance companies now would fund such a system in perpetuity. Simple, relatively cheap, to cover all Americans, pay doctors and hospitals what they're worth, with enough left over to start funding a massive reconstruction of our passenger rail system nationwide. Not to mention a complete overhaul of our energy infrastructure to plan for the decline of oil production worldwide, and the natural gas cliff that is coming up any time now.

All things that would have made a lot of people's lives better. Things a responsible government would have done long since.

If we were going to borrow a trillion bucks from the *chinese* for christ's sweet sake, we could have spent it on investments in the future, you know?

Now we're over our heads to the Chinese, for what?

What has the Iraq war done? Killed a lot of innocent people (along with some guilty), destroyed a country, made the world far more dangerous for America and Americans specifically, and, lest I forget, enriched to obscene levels the Friends of George and Dick.

I'm going to go spend some time vomiting in the toilet now, thanks.

9/11 and fear is all they have left so of course Mr. Snowman is going to raise it.

King George the Turd was right in picking the Snowman as his press secretary. It makes it easy to explain the lies of his gang as snowjobs. What is a trillion Dollars afterall? We can print them in a few days, no problem there. And paper is patient afterall, not worth a hell of a lot, but patient, it lets you print on it whatever denomination you want. Whether it is worth something is another question. Just askc the hundreds of thousand Americans who lost their homes in foreclosure recently. But running a country in a similar fashion is not only dangerous but criminal, especially when the criminals have well looked after themselves. Nothing new there. Unfortunately on 9/11 the wrong target was hit.

That trillion bucks wasn't swept into a pile and set on fire. It fed borrowed money into the economy, (which first stopped along the way in the pockets of the big arms merchants and Halliburton to dump off some obscene profits).

should be shocking. Instead, it's just the typical spin du jour from this Administration.

Sept. 11 and its aftermath cost (maybe, who knows, whatever) $1 trillion so that means it's ok that the invasion and occupation will cost at least that much??

...which should have been something like, "so the report is saying that the cost of the Iraq war is only $1 trillion, but you're saying it's more like $2 trillion?"

His logic and the administration's for many moons has been that Iraq is [through several steps] our response to 9/11. And he must have had a reason to bring it up. Why can't someone in that room call him on it and just ask the question?

"Which is it, Tony? $1 trillion or $2 trillion?"

The most horrific part is, it would be better if the $1,000,000,000,000 had been swept into a pile and burned. Instead, we have done immeasurable harm with it. Hell, buying a single $1,000,000,000,000 toilet would have left us all better off (especially those who got to use the toilet). But on the other hand, it only comes to about $3000 per person in the US. Doesn't that sound better?