i was sent this cost of war "calculator" with a message lamenting how scary it was.

when i clicked on it and watched those numbers climb upwards at a staggeringly fast rate (~$2000/second) my first reaction was what the web authors intended: astonishment at the massive number but even greater shock at the rate of increase. and depression at what that money could buy in terms of food, medicine, and education.

but that calculator is misleading. if you read how they've calculated the numbers, you'll see that the calculator is set to reach $135 billion on 30 september. so the rate of increase is entirely dependent on (a) the start (??) and end (9/30) times they've set up plus the number (135 billion) they've set as the endpoint. the rate is therefore not at all indicative of *really* how much money/second the government is spending in iraq. (caveat: the rate would be correct if the start date on the clock was whenever the government started spending money on iraq (note: this is before the start of the war, as they had started sending troops and equipment over weeks or months before)). now don't get me wrong--the $135 billion that congress has already authorized is A LOT OF MONEY that i certainly think could have/should have been spent better elsewhere. all i'm saying is that the costofwar.com calculator is misleading in a way that is all-to-easy to miss, and that misleading statistics like this are a pet peeve of mine.