Much like the number of Iraqi dead, the financial cost of the war is often underestimated by well-meaning people. I'd guess a real victim of the war would find it offensive to have the financial cost compared to a Hollywood movie. Titanic caused a few sore bums and a few dead brain cells - hardly comparable.
 http://costofwar.com/index-public-education.html

In fact these figures do not represent a financial cost to the U.S. at all compared to the cost of doing nothing. Because oil is currently priced only in Dollars, all the U.S. has to do is print more of them to pay for the 'cost' of the war. This is a difficult concept to get hold of, but believe me, its true. Ever since the early seventies, the U.S. has simply been able to print dollars whenever it needed to pay for imported goods (ie. oil) without ever having to redeem their value.

If Iraq had not been invaded, and left alone to trade its oil in Euros (a practice it initiated just months before the invasion) it would have resulted in the collapse of the Dollar. It would have been be payback time, and the U.S. would effectivly be bankrupt.

The proposed Iran Oil Bourse poses an even bigger threat to the dollar, and the implication is that the U.S. will now have to attack Iran to prevent the complete collapse of the American economy - a collapse that is likely to cause greater hardship to many Americans than the great depression of the 1930's.

As the proposed Bourse is due to begin trading by March this year, we can fully expect military action to follow shortly afterwards. It will not be neccessary for the U.S. to take full control of Iran - turning it into a war zone will do the trick, for as long as the operation of the oil trade in Euros is disrupted, America can continue to print as many dollars as it likes to pay for the millitary action.

It is staggering how little of this information has been reported in the mainstream media, either in the U.K. or U.S., but try looking on the web and you'll find plenty of information from non-corporate sources.

 http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Iran+Oil+Bourse&btnG=Search&meta=

If you have ever wondered why all this nonsense about Iran's nuclear research had a distinct whiff of bullshit about it, here's your reason. In exactly the same way 'WMD' nonsense was used to attack Iraq, the corporate media is using the nuclear issue to distract attention from the real reasons for millitary madness.

One of the clearest explanations of this can be found here, an article that has apparently spread like wildfire around the net since its release on January 20th (although many versions of it have been almost imperceptively corrupted for some reason).

 http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/petrov/2006/0120.html

This thesis is corroberated by the announcement last November that the U.S. "Federal Reserve System will cease publication of the M3 monetary aggregate" (effectively a measure of how much foreign debt the U.S. has accumulated by printing Dollars).

 http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/discm3.htm

See also

 https://www1.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/london/2004/10/298900.html