Infographics Movie: Cost of the War In Iraq

In the time that it takes you to watch this movie, the US government will have spent $500,000 towards the war in Iraq. At least that's what this Atari-sounding clip says. Watch as millions of dollars are put into perspective - 84 brand new schools, a flag pin for every man, woman, and child in America, and a hummer plus 10 years of gas.

One improvement that immediately came to mind was to show what could be purchased over time instead of what you could buy with the money over various time frames. Then the time series would make more sense, and one could show the sum over the span of the movie.

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Comments

Joel
Jul 1, 2008, 11:31 am

Cool! Maybe they’ll do one on the War On Poverty!

Karl K
Jul 4, 2008, 4:20 pm

And how about one that shows how much could be purchased on a per minute basis using, say, our tax dollars devoted to pork barrel spending…or the administrative expenses associate with the Department of Education…

…Or how about the amount of time it takes an Saddam Hussein feyadeen to shred a human body feet first into a wood chipper…or the amount of time it takes to dig a mass grave to fit 150,000 bodies….or the amount of time it takes for someone like al Musab al Zarqawi to saw off the head of a captive like Daniel Pearl…

I am sorry, this sort of “information visualization” is not enlightening, rather it’s purely demagogic…