W. and the damage done - counting the cost of electing a dud President [SALON]

Here it is in a nutshell:
Amount the Bush administration estimated the war would cost from start to finish: $60 billion
Cost to conduct the war per month: $12 billion
Total cost of the |Iraq war: From the start of the war through 2017, "You can't get any lower than $3 trillion."
An Iraqi oil official says the country's oil revenues were up over 30 percent last year — to about $60 billion — despite the sharp decline in world prices in the last half of the year.

You do the math. Did it make economic sense - did the US make a profit/benfit from going to war? The simple answer is no. Here's another question: did certain contractors and individuals benefit/profit from the war (at the expense of a majority of Americans and Iraqi's. Obviously the answer is Yes.

clipped from www.salon.com What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages. The Bush White House's proposed cuts in public transit funding for fiscal year 2009 Though he capitulated in the face of overwhelming congressional majorities in favor of Amtrak, Bush threatened repeatedly to defund the national rail system altogether. National debt: $10.6 trillion Amount of that debt owned by China: At least $800 billion clipped from www.salon.com Cost: From the start of the war through 2017, "You can't get any lower than $3 trillion." Amount of money earned by a married U.S. Army sergeant with children per day in Iraq in 2007: $170 Amount of money earned by a Blackwater military contractor per day: $600 Number of U.S. military deaths as of Jan. 7, 2009: 4,222 Cost of the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad: $592 million Cost to conduct the war per month: $12 billion Amount the Bush administration estimated the war would cost from start to finish: $60 billion