Martin Matishak, The Fiscal Times

The war against the Islamic State has now cost American taxpayers more than $7 billion, a figure that could increase dramatically as the U.S. prepares to send 200 more troops to Iraq to help fight the extremist network. As of March 15, the price tag for 568 days of war was $6.8 billion, with an average cost of $11.5 million per day, according to a Defense Department report released on Tuesday. If the daily tab has held steady since then, another $402.5 million can be added to the sum, putting the total over $7.2 billion.

Given the Obama administration’s airpower-first approach to battling ISIS it’s not surprising that daily flight operations accounted for 48 percent of the war’s cost, or about $3.2 billion.

http://heraldsun.com.au - At 9pm on the evening of April 6 Sally Faulkner was sitting between the two single beds in a small one bedroom “safe house’’ in the shelled out poor area of Sabra in Beirut, desperately ringing the Australian embassy in Lebanon. On the first try no one answered. On the second, a security official said to ring back the following morning when the office was open. Plans to be quickly rescued by Australian officials — and getting some assistance to escape Lebanon — evaporated throughout the night.

How different the saga of the past fortnight may have played out if Faulkner had managed to get inside the embassy grounds and obtain some limited diplomatic protection for her children. Instead, on this first evening back with their mother in nearly a year, Faulkner’s children, five year old Lahela and three year old Noah were sleeping peacefully in the safe house.