Blood money for the poor

$0,000,000,000. Ten zeros. Add a five to the front and you get 50 billion dollars. According to www.cnn.com on Jan. 2, 2003, that's how much President Bush plans to spend while invading Iraq, removing Saddam from Baghdad, and stealing all of his shiny missiles.\nOther estimates include the Congressional Democrats' $93 billion price tag and G.W.'s understandably former economic advisor Larry Lindsey's $200 billion. For the purposes of this discussion, let's run the middle ground and say the war will cost 75 billion greenbacks.\nLet's think about this for a moment. Bush is willing to spend $75 billion to destroy a predominately desert country that the CIA fact book claims is about "twice the size of Idaho." Isn't there a better way to spend all this money while still accomplishing Bush's goals of putting Saddam in a box and taking his inflammable toys away from him?\nThe United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization found in a 2000 survey of Iraq's malnutrition that many government employees were earning as little as $2.50 per month. We, on the other hand, have $75 billion committed to Iraq; $3125 for each of the 24 million Iraqi residents. For those of you who aren't so hot in math, that's an additional 104 years of salary for a public servant.\nHere's the idea: We offer Iraq our $75 billion to spread equally throughout the population on the condition that Hussein personally brings all of the weapons that make Bush so nervous to a neutral third country. While he's gone the people of Iraq can lock the door and find a new leader. If Hussein doesn't play ball, the Iraqi civilians will give him a shove once they learn that America has offered them a century of salary in exchange for their ever-friendly tyrant. In accordance with our new-found peaceful solution, this shove doesn't have to necessarily come in the form of a violent coup. Iraq could hold democratic elections to decide if they a) pass go and collect $3125 or b) experience the weather phenomenon of "raining bombs."\nCould this work? I don't see why not. I don't know of any precedent that says humanitarianism cannot win a war. Would we lose face as a nation? Hardly. The international community is largely against the war in the first place. If we dropped our tough-guy stance and did something productive with our money, we would receive applause, not chastisement. If instead we go through with this war, many faces dearer than any reputation will be lost with no hope of recovery.\nThis plan also sends a message to the Islamic world more eloquently than anything the Office of Global Communications could concoct. Something like … "We aren't all bad, we aren't fighting for the oil, and we don't believe that Islam is synonymous with terrorism. We are simply trying to make the world a better place." \nBush said in his 2003 State of the Union Address, "We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers." If Bush sacrificed our money rather than our lives, the world might actually believe him.\nLet's review. Bush wants missiles and a psychopath, preferably covered with enough postage stamps to ship them third class to Atlantis. With the proposed plan, Bush gets both. The Iraqi civilians want to be alive, liberated and not as impoverished. The Iraqis get that. Americans want our troops to return with all limbs attached. Americans get that. The world wants to breathe a sigh of relief. Breathe away.