Iraq spending: ROI?

[theseus51]

Well, ROI is the amount of return. But the dollar has lost so much value, and oil has like tripled in price for us, and I wouldn't even begin to know how to calculate the loss of thousands of American lives.

If you think of oil alone, I think we import 10million barrels, from $25 pre-war to $85 now. Granted oil going up more than 3 fold isn't all to the Iraq war, but I would say a good part is. Even if we say half the price increase is from the war,

$30 * 10 million * 365 = $109 billion a year

War has been going on 5 years, so we lost about $500 billion, just from oil. After spending hundreds of billions on the war, that's at least a -100% ROI. Maybe the real number is -300% ROI, who knows.