$282 Million sounds like a lot until you put it in perspective...

I saw a huge front page story today about how a bank in Baghdad got robbed to the tune of $282 million dollars. Sure seems like a huge heist, right? Sure seems like terrorists are gonna end up with that money, right? Let me just point out two things.

First, what the hell is $282 US Dollars in cash doing in a bank in Iraq? That country is in the middle of a civil war. The only real surprise is that it took this long to get robbed. For that matter, along the same line, what the hell is a bank doing open for business in Baghdad? That city in under seige by multiple armies of desperate men. See above for the completion of this point.

Second, $282 million is a huge heist. Hell, that's bigger than the heist in "Ocean's 11", and that one was just cooked up by some screenwriter who could have said anything he wanted. He could have had Clooney say "Let's steal eleventy billion dollars from Terry Benedict", yet even at the limits of his imagination, that writer chose less than the REAL heist in Baghdad.

Yet let's think about the dollar amount the US spends in Iraq (not even counting the lives lost every day). The figure is ten billion a month. Break that down and you get...$333 million a day. So they stole less than one day's treasure in a war that has lasted more than five years. Ouch.