And counting.

• Position: Between The Lines ... a Website tracks the costs of U.S. occupation of Iraq

... AND COUNTING Here's the home page of a website guaranteed to raise your blood pressure--a running count of the estimated costs of the Iraq War, and some of the alternative ways the money that war has consumed could have been used instead. (While the numbers on this printed annotation stop the clock at a particular moment of the post-war chaos, the numbers on the actual website fly upward before your eyes at nerve-wracking speed.) The costs are based, as noted, on the U.S. government's own estimates. There could well be additional "black-budget" costs the government is not disclosing. The site was set up by two American citizen-activists, Niko Matsakis a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based computer programmer, and Elias Vlanton, an investigative writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Eisenhower, the top U.S. general in World War II, led the Allies to victory and was elected President of the United States in a landslide, It was the Republican "Ike" who warned of the "military-industrial complex" that could pose a growing threat to American liberty and wellbeing.

The local price: The site also shows the costs of the Iraq war to selected cities and counties in the United States, and the value of the alternatives that might have been available to those communities. For example, in San Jose, California, a key center of the global knowledge industry, the city's share of the war's cost could have been used instead to hire 3,790 additional teachers, or to provide 5,047 additional fouryear scholarships for the community's college students. In Detroit, where substandard housing is a serious problem, the city's share of the war's cost could have purchased 1,342 new affordable housing units--or could have sent an additional 13,282 underprivileged children to Head Start.

What money can't buy The website focuses on economic costs, but arguably the greatest costs are not financially quantifiable. They include the toll of lives lost, families broken, and the damage done to cultural heritage and stability. For example, a linked website, www.iraqbodycount.net, shows a running count of the number of Iraqi civilians killed--and largely ignored by U.S authorities and media. General Tommy Franks of the U.S. Central Command is quoted: "We don't do body counts." But the site shows that as of September 11, 2003, the number of reported civilian deaths had reached at least...