Quickie: A surge at $57,077.60 a minute

Image by Jayel Aheram via Flickr

Jo Comerford writing for Tomdispatch calculates the cost of the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan ($57,077.60 Surging by the Minute):

“Women and men from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will be among the first to head out. It takes an estimated $1 million to send each of them surging into Afghanistan for one year. So a 30,000-person surge will be at least $30 billion, which brings us to that $57,077.60. That’s how much it will cost you, the taxpayer, for one minute of that surge. […]

For purposes of comparison, $30 billion -- remember, just the Pentagon-estimated cost of a 30,000-person troop surge -- is equal to 80% of the total U.S. 2010 budget for international affairs, which includes monies for development and humanitarian assistance.”

Read the whole thing here.