Statecraft Informer

Setting aside the question of blood, sweat and tears, how many hundreds of billions of dollars has the Iraq occupation cost so far?

Do you know?

Does anyone?

The U.S. military estimates it’s been spending about $1 billion dollars a week in Iraq (it’s more like $1 billion a month in Afghanistan). We’re going on 200 weeks, so there’s an approximate number.

Neither figure includes the costs of reconstruction or reparation, which naturally involves no-bid contracts and other sweetheart deals for the well-connected. The estimates for that work range all the way to $300 billion.

That’s a lot of money. But it’s worth it, right, so we “fight ‘em over there, instead of over here?”

Well, I’m afraid we’d damned well better keep “‘em” over there as long as we can, because there isn’t enough money left these days to prevent “‘em” from coming over here, or going back home once their visits are over.

Domestic security officials have for now given up on plans to develop a facial or fingerprint recognition system to determine whether a vast majority of foreign visitors leave the country.

Known as U.S. Visit, it has been called critical to security and important in efforts to curb illegal immigration.

Most foreign visitors enter and exit by land from Mexico and Canada, and the policy shift means that officials will remain unable to track the departures. Some of the Sept. 11 terrorists remained in the country after their visas had expired, and if U.S. Visit had been in place in 2001, the attacks might never have taken place.

The Homeland Security Department has conceded that they lack the financing and technology to have exit-monitoring systems at the 50 busiest land border crossings by next December, as originally planned.

Congress ordered the creation of such a system in 1996.

Stewart A. Baker, the assistant secretary for homeland security policy, estimated that an exit system at the land borders would cost “tens of billions of dollars� and said the department had concluded that such a program was not feasible, at least for the time being.

“Congress has said, ‘We want you to do it.’ We are not going to ignore what Congress has said. But the costs here are daunting.” said Mr. Stewart.

There are many plans for making America citizens safer here at home, like U.S. Visit, which have been mothballed, scrapped, or scaled way back, due to insufficient funds.

Our ports and borders remain about as secure as #10 cheesecloth.

But at least we did get all those weapons of mass destruction…