Griper News: Griper Blade: Hundreds of Billions for War, Pretty Much Jack for Refugees of War

The refugee crisis in Iraq and her neighbors should be news. Big news. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Iraq's refugee crisis is "the largest population movement since Palestinians were displaced after the creation of Israel in 1948." There are 1.8 million internally displaced and another 2 million have fled to other nations, according to the International Herald Tribune. Yet we in the west hear almost nothing about it.

Which is why we aren't freaking out about how little we're doing about it. The Herald Tribune tells us that the US State Department plans to spend $20 million on aiding refugees. Do the math; that's a little more than ten bucks per refugee for the internally displaced alone. That ought to go a long way.

Compare that $20 million figure to this:

Associated Press:

Keeping troops in Iraq for another year and a half will cost nearly a quarter-trillion dollars — about $800 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — under the budget President Bush will submit to Congress Monday.

Bush will ask for $100 billion more for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior Pentagon official said Friday. Those requests come on top of about $344 billion spent for Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.