I'll See Your 300 Billion and Raise You One Better Planet

Jesse at Optimism From the Hills has a few items on which he would like to spend the $300 Billion projected for the Iraq War by the end of next year:

I wonder what $300 billion would have done to [the] alternative energy industry in this country. Could Detroit possibly have figured out a way to restructure its plants to begin producing large quantities of hybrids? Could scientists have worked on greater efficiency of solar cells and wind turbines? I know virtually nothing on economics, but $300 billion sounds like a huge amount of money. We probably could have demined the entire world, cured cancer and AIDS, fed and housed the entire world with that figure. Instead, we have Saddam, somewhere, and an Iraqi populace that can't wait to kick us out.