I will say one thing about the war in Iraq: opportunity cost. Costofwar.com calculates the opportunity cost of this specific war, and What the World Wants does the same for war in general, in sickening detail. It looks like Gulf War II will cost well in excess of $100bn. That’s about the cost of NASA’s Mars Reference Mission. A prison colony couldn’t cost that much more, and then you have a place to send people when they get voted off the planet in Big Brother International.

Is Iraq’s oil worth $100 billion?, and what could be done with that $100bn? asks Philip Greenspun. I wonder. You could pay off Dr. Evil. You could buy ten trillion penny chews. You could buy enough ammo to shoot every last god damn person in the world. Oh wait, that’s what they actually did spend it on.