This is the cost of only two and a half years worth of US propaganda:
$1.62 billion USD
= $1,863,000,000 CDN! That's nuts!
George takes the cake for manipulating the media - and there wasn't even any good propaganda art produced like the Chinese, Russian, North Korean, or Germans put out.
Bush administration spent 1.6 billion on public relations: report - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush's administration spent 1.62 billion dollars on advertising and public relations contracts over two and a half years, an independent agency said. "
Gerard Donnelly Smith has an interesting essay on the use of propaganda to affect the outcomes of the war.
The BBC had a story on this on December 1, 2005.
$1.6 billion could build Katrina victims 6400 $250k houses, or keep them on cruise ships for the rest of their natural lives, if they weren't being charged $15k/month to stay there.
$1.6 billion could buy over 946 million McDonalds fries @ $1.69. That's enough to feed almost all of the population of India in 2001.
$1.6 billion minus $1.5 billion would keep me happy for quite awhile....
