US Donates More Abrams Tanks, Humvees to Iraq
WASHINGTON — The United States provided the Iraqi armed forces with $300 million in donated military equipment in 2014, and over the next two months will deliver six more Abrams tanks and 50 up-armored Humvees at no cost to the Baghdad government, according to information provided by the US Embassy in Baghdad.
The deliveries come on the heels of the announcement that the US had donated 250 mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles to Iraqi and Kurdish forces since late December in a deal that also provided six months of US-provided maintenance for the hulking blast-resistant vehicles.
More: US Donates More Abrams Tanks, Humvees to Iraq
The latest shipments of equipment are only a fraction of the estimated $30 billion that the American taxpayer has paid to train and equip — now for a second time in a decade — a force that has yet to really prove itself. From 2003 to 2011, the United States spent $25 billion to build a 400,000-strong Iraqi security force that today numbers (according to anyone’s best guess) in the tens of thousands. But that original $25 billion is old news, as the U.S. investment keeps growing.
Read More at Foreign Policy Situation Report.
So let’s put this into perspective. $30 BILLION US Dollars
Bill Gates net worth is 79.2 Billion
US Federal Deficit is $483 Billion
The National Parks Service gets just under $3 Billion.
and from WHO:
The total cost for immunization from 2006 to 2015, including the costs to maintain the existing immunization system, is estimated to be US$ 35.5 billion in the 72 GAVI Alliance-eligible countries (range: US$ 13-40 billion), of which 54% maintains current immunization efforts and the remaining 46% is for scaling-up (5% campaigns, 16% systems, 25% vaccines). This shows a considerable shift in the distribution of spending from systems to vaccines as more expensive vaccines are introduced: of the costs to maintain current routine immunization, 25% are for vaccines; in scaling up, 60% of the costs are for vaccines.
Here is a interactive map of the Cost of Prisons by State from the Washington Post from 2014.