[♫ old jazz music ♫ ] Hello and good Wednesday, April 18th, 2007. I'm Joanne and this is Rocketboom. Well, I got a little stuck there in France, and I could do an airline rant right now, but I think I'll save the airspace to talk about a much larger problem, as it were, the $500 billion dollars lost in the War on Terror. $378 billion for Iraq, $99 billion for Afghanistan, with an additional $27 biilion on actual security. We know the people fighting out there on the front lines aren't making all the cash, so where is it going? Projections of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles onto urban buildings? [♫ dark, urban music♫ ] Mmm... no. The spit artists? [♫ upbeat violin music♫ ] No... I feel like I may be a few days behind in learning about this art, but I can firmly say I believe that almost none of the $500 billion is going to spit artists. [spitting noise] Zero! No skiing London Tube stickers? [♫ rock music♫ ] No, no "no skiing London Tube" stickers. At least not as directly as the recent increase in wealth at of the top one percent. I think we can pretty much gather it's going into blowing stuff up. What would $500 billion get the United States otherwise? Well, the annual GDP of Afghanistan is around $7 billion. For Iraq, it's under $100 billion. Maybe we could have just bought peace instead. Pitch in $150 billion for Google and we still have a quarter trillion to play with. I'd take this: add a serious do-gooder... and don't get me wrong. I'd keep a billion for myself, as well. I'd buy myself one of these, one of these, and one of these, or if they were out, one of these and some of these. And I could offer some paybacks for damage done. Nine NASA astronauts lost in duty have been awarded five million or more. The US only offers a few thousand for accidentally killing Iraqis. Give more, cause less! We could outfit a bunch of people with this new high-tech urban warfare costume. Or we could hire Fabio to act as our spokeperson to lure old women into wireless broadcasts on UStream.tv by the Geek Squad in order to locate the five million missing Rove e-mails. And the recipients and senders to and from the Rove mail e-mails are missing, too, I'm guessing. And the backups are missing as well, apparently. [in French] Yet all that's old news by this point. Hmm... why? [in French] Ah, it's because just got back to this country. We could also take care of this man's stuff: his debt, his music library, the original master tapes. He needs some help. [Music video in French] A cheesburger and a Coke! What the hell is this shitty McDonald's? Where is he? You've all agreed to enrage me this rotten Sunday afternoon. Since it's like that, I'm going to get a beer. Did that make sense? Anyway, half a trillion dollars spent on the war on terror. I'd ask you to find sense in this, but what's the sense in finding sense in senselessness? www.rocketboom.com