'Globe' Asks, With Photos: What Else Would Money Spent on Iraq Buy?

By: E&P Staff The folks at The Boston Globe's www.boston.com got to wondering the other day: With the price tag for the Iraq soaring to at least $456 billion, what else could that money have been spent on?

But rather than just rattle out some numbers on ending malnutrition around the globe, they put together a photo gallery today to illustrate the idea. Some of what they pictured:

-- "Tagged as the most expensive high school in Massachusetts, at $154.6 million, Newton North High School could be replicated almost 3,000 times using the money spent on the war."

-- "At published rates for next year, $456 billion translates into 14.5 million free rides for a year at Harvard; 44 million at UMass."

-- "With just one-sixth of the U.S. money targeted for the Iraq war, you could convert all cars in America to run on ethanol.
TheBudgetGraph.com estimates that converting the 136,568,083 registered cars in the United States to ethanol (conversion kits at $500) would cost $68.2 billion."

-- "The Red Sox and Daisuke Matsuzaka agreed on a six-year, $52 million contract. The war cost could be enough to have Dice-K mania for another 52,615 years at this year's rate."

The final photo slot asked for readers' suggestions. Among the ones submitted:

-- Annex Venezuela

--Pay off everyone's student loans

-- "Crash program to install new nanosolar technologies (not the old-style panels..these are coatings) on every outdoor roof surface and sell back excess electricity back to the grid."