Skinner's Iraq War Strategies That Would Work Better and Cost Less

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Mon Mar-20-06 03:18 PM
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Skinner's Iraq War Strategies That Would Work Better and Cost Less

Last Friday, MSNBC reported that the cost of the Iraq War could surpass $1 trillion. If you're like me, you're wondering, "Gee, I wonder what I could do with that kind of cash?" (Answer: diamond grillz.) But if you're the more responsible type, you're probably wondering if perhaps that $1 trillion could have been better spent by the US Government. Setting aside wasteful big-government boondoggles like "universal health care," "quality public schools," or "port security," could we have come up with a strategy for the war in Iraq that would have worked better and cost less?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hold on there! I'm just the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee! Why should I be expected to know what a trillion is?" Allow me to explain.

A trillion is a one with twelve zeros, which looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000. Put in simpler terms, one trillion is a thousand billions. Or a million millions. Or a trillion ones. See, doesn't that make is much more clear? For those of you who are still confused, let me put it in layman's terms: If you had a trillion one-dollar bills and put them in your wallet in your back pocket, it would make it very, very difficult to sit comfortably. At the very least, you would probably have to take your wallet out and place it on the dashboard while you are driving. To put it another another way: A trillion one-dollar bills placed end-to-end would reach all the way around Bill O'Reilly's ego. See? It all makes sense now.

Now that we have that squared away, I humbly offer "Skinner's Iraq War Strategies That Would Work Better and Cost Less."

Strategy #1: Lavish First Class Vacation to Disney World
It turns out that it's actually pretty difficult to find first-class tickets from Baghdad to Orlando on the Internet. I checked Orbitz and Expedia, and neither was able to quote a price for the itinerary I wanted. I was, however, able to find first-class tickets from Dubai, UAE, to Orlando: $7856 on Emirates Airlines (with a Saturday-night stay). Let's assume an additional $5,000 for a first-class ticket from Baghdad to Dubai. According to the Disney website, a night at their top-of-the-line Grand Floridian resort is $349 to $645. Let's put our Iraqi friends in the most expensive room, for seven days. That's $4515 each if we give each traveler their own room that they don't have to share with other family members. Then, of course, we need to purchase them tickets to Disney World itself. The Disney World website does not have an option for "Iraq" under "Which country are you traveling from?" so I selected "Kuwait" instead. I also included the "Park Hopper" option, so visitors could visit more than one park each day. Price: $244. Just for fun, let's give each person $1000 spending money per day, or $7000. Add it all together and it costs $24,615 for each Iraqi man, woman, or child we send to Disney World. Let's send all of them. There are an estimated 26,074,906 people in Iraq, for a grand total of $641,833,811,190.

Bottom line: Only $641 billion to send every Iraqi citizen on a first class vacation to Disney World, which is about $360 billion cheaper than our current policy. Not only is it cheaper, but it would have the added bonus of improving the image of the United States, rather than making everyone hate us. And let's face it, how could the people of Iraq possibly not overthrow their despotic government after tasting the sweet, sweet freedom of Disney World?

Strategy #2: Killer Bees
Assuming that this article is typical, it should take approximately 1 million bees to kill a human being. How much would it cost to buy a million bees? Let's check the Internet.

Since we're looking for highly-evolved killing machines, we're going to bypass the run-of-the-mill Italian bees ($60 for three pounds) and instead purchase "Buckfast" bees, which are named for their terrifying stingers like Buck Knives and their lightning-fast airspeed. Three pounds of these bees cost $90 at Draper Bee (or $30 per pound). A bee weighs a tenth of a gram, so a million bees would weigh about 220 pounds and cost about $6,600. A covert special-ops military operation involving Green Berets trained in the arcane art of beekeeping would unleash an almost biblical swarm of bees to the heart of the Sunni triangle, killing every Iraqi man, woman, and child for the low, low price of $172,094,379,600.

Bottom line: Only $172 billion dollars to clear out the entire country, without any loss of American life. If instead we only want to cause mass havoc and regional instability (ie: what we have under our current Iraq policy) I'm thinking we could cut the number of bees by 75%. Cost? Only $43 billion.

Strategy #3: Direct Payment to Halliburton
If you are familiar with the old cost-cutting business strategy known as "eliminating the middle man" you should be able to immediately grasp the brilliance of this Iraq War Strategy. Here's how it works: Instead of invading another country, just write a check directly to Halliburton for $100 billion dollars.

Bottom line: No messy, unpredictable war. No embarrassing loss of international prestige or moral authority for the United States. No loss of stability in Middle East. Efficiently achieves core administration value of shifting massive amount of national wealth to multimillionaire friends of Vice President and/or President. Would also work for various oil companies.

Strategy #4: Let the Terrorists Fight the Iraqis
President Bush has eloquently argued that the War in Iraq keeps America safe from terrorists because we can "Fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here." But imagine how much safer we'd be if we weren't doing any of the fighting there or here? Instead of attracting terrorists to Iraq by invading, what if we just chartered a few airline flights for terrorists to Baghdad from global hot-spots? We could provide the necessary motivation to the hate-America crowd by spreading around pictures of high-ranking American officials (like, for example, the current Secretary of Defense) cozying up with Saddam. Support for insane religious extremists should not be a problem, considering past support for Taliban, Saudi Arabia, Jerry Falwell. Total cost: $10 million dollars, tops.

Bottom line: For a few million dollars, we could get the terrorists and Saddam Hussein preoccupied in long, ugly armed conflict, thus leaving America free to watch Britney Spears videos and "Desperate Housewives" unmolested.

Strategy #5: $3,000 for Every American
Ok, I admit it -- this one doesn't actually have anything to do with Iraq. But check this out: US Population: 295,734,134. Multiply that by $3,000 for a total cost of $887,202,402,000.

Bottom line: What would you rather have, $3,000 or this war? Yeah, me too.