Cost - Benefit Analysis

Conservatives seem to be enamored of cost - benefit analyses; I wonder if they've done this one yet.

The latest figure I've seen on the cost of our Iraqi operations is $4.7 billion/month or $56.4 billion/year. Just what have we gotten for that money? 700 soldiers dead, hundreds - if not thousands - of damaged and destroyed pieces of equipment, a country in chaos - a spark in the powder keg of the Middle East, thousands of civilian Iraqis dead, a new source of hatred and terrorism where there was none before, the passions of the entire Muslim world inflamed against the US. I'm sure I've missed a few in there, feel free to add your own.

I'm not sure of the cost of maintaining the No-Fly Zone in pre-war Iraq, but I'm sure it was several magnitudes of order less than $4.7 billion/month. There was likely some administrative and operational costs to maintaining the embargo on Iraq, but not much and it would have been spread across those who contributed to the UN budget at the time. What did that relatively small amount of money get us? Iraq was no threat to its neighbors, no threat to the US (as was stated before the war and has been proved since), Hussein was essentially a prisoner in his own country, his military was a shadow of its former (not very effective) self, and the UN was, as it turned out, rather effective in keeping Iraq from developing any further weapons capabilities. Again, I'm sure you can think of more.

A fair bargain? Now it's not so strange to consider that the Repugs haven't mentioned Cost - Benefit Analysis in the last year...