You know that Iraqi bank heist of millions of dollars?

Apparently it was faked:

....three security guards were reported to have made off with $282 million in a spectacular bank robbery last week.

Baghdad was obsessed with the enormous figure for about a day. But before long an Iraqi-American Web site declared that the bank robbers' spoils were not in fact all that impressive -- especially when compared with the cost of the US military operation in Iraq, which costs US taxpayers $375 million a day, or more than $11 billion a month and around $135 billion a year.

In truth, the bank robbers made off with only $388,000, which is certainly a handsome sum, but a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers both Iraqi and American officials are currently tossing around. The game they are playing is meant to divert the public's attention from the dead, the mutilated soldiers, the war widows and the pressing questions of whether the American nightmare on the Tigris makes any sense at all and when it will finally come to an end.

If we had taken the Iraqi population pre-2003 invasion: 24,001,816 (estimation given here.)

And taken the amount of money we've spent on the war as of today: 443,940,000,000 (Those numbers don't hold still, do they?)

And then offered each and every single Iraqi 18,000$, adults and children alike, do you think they would have risen up and overthrown Saddam by themselves?

No shock and awe, no bombings, no war. Everybody would have been happy.

Except Cheney and the oil robber barons.