I was betting against this: good news!

Oil prices slip to 90 dollars
Tue Sep 16, 2008
NEW YORK (AFP) - Oil prices fell Tuesday flirting with the 90-dollar mark to reach new seven-month lows amid turmoil on the financial markets which could spur lower energy demand, traders said.

Just a reminder: if on 1 March 2003 we'd struck a deal with Saddam to buy all his oil for $90/bbl, we'd have paid $550,530,000,000 through September of this year.
This generously assumes Iraq's pre-war oil production to be 3Mn bbls/day. The more realistic estimate of Iraq's pre-war oil production is more like 2.5Mn bbls/day, which puts the price-tag for this imagined deal at about $460Bn.

So far on the war we've spent just under $554,680,000.

On 1 Mar 2003, oil was trading at just about $36/bbl. This deal would have offered Saddam a 150% mark-up over prevaling market prices... and we'd have the oil!... no cost to W's oil-patch buds: the U.S. taxpayers just give it to 'em as a free gift!

There's just a chance that this financial windfall would've persuaded Saddam to play nicer with us, and given us some leverage regarding his domestic & foreign policies. Who knows?

Baghdad might not today be a bombed-out jigsaw-puzzle of walled enclaves.
Who knows?

4000+ U.S. soldiers might still be alive.
Who knows?

Millions of Iraqis might be living in their homes, not in refugee camps in Jordan & Syria...
Who knows?

We might even have captured bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar (like W promised!).
Who knows?

Stop the madness!

p.s. We're spending about $340Mn/day in Iraq. Barclays bought Lehnman's North American banking operations for $250Mn.