Here are 10 points to start off your new year on the right, er, center foot.

1) More than 2000 American soldiers have died during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) more have been both mentally and physically wounded. Tens of thousands (over one hundred thousand?) of Iraqis have died during the invasion/occupation with countless more mentally and/or physically injured.

2) On 911 3000 Americans died with hundreds of thousands more mentally and/or physically injured.

3) No less than 37,000 people have died in car accidents every year since 1995 (source: www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/) in America, alone.

4) Lung cancer killed 157,630 Americans in 2002, the most recent year statistics are available. (source: www.cdc.gov/lungcancer/statistics/index.htm)

5) Worldwide, roughly 3 million humans died in 2005 thanks to AIDS. (source: www.avert.org/worldstats.htm)

6) While statistics vary wildly depending on who you talk to (+-thousands), the highest estimates have the human race losing, on average, 3,227 lives a year for the past five years to terrorism, worldwide. (according to RAND/MIPT numbers, 2001 and 2004 saw more than 4000 deaths for obvious reasons – 911 and Iraq) (source: www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/intlterror.html)

7) According to the UN Ambassador from Sri Lanka, Prasad Kariyawasam, it will take $2.1 billion to give 150,000 Sri Lankans their homes back, post-tsunami. $500 million has been dispersed of the required money in the first year after the tsunami hit. (source: www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/28/1457235)

8) At the start of 2006 the war in Iraq has cost Americans in excess of $230 billion. (source: nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182)

9) In 2004 projections estimated that the 2004 presidential election would cost more than $1 billion–this includes not only administration of the election itself, but also the advertising and general expenses of the candidates. (source: www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/2004/04spending.asp)

10) You are more likely to die of AIDS, lung cancer, or in a car accident than you are in a terrorist bomb. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Government could have paid for the complete reconstruction of Sri Lanka several times over ($2.1 billion), bribed Saddam Hussein into stepping down ($50 million? $100 million?), AND STILL had tens of billions of dollars left over to sink into a cure for AIDS, cancer and ways to make our roads and cars safer.

Why are you afraid of terrorists when cars are ten times more likely to kill you?

Hell, AIDS is a thousand times more likely to kill you…