The war in Iraq has actually been a success.  The U.S population, and certainly the anti-Bush crowd does not understand global commodity finance.  Let me explain how world oil markets really work.  People don't understand that most oil in the US is imported from Canada and Mexico and Venezuela.  So why does it matter what happens to middle east oil?  That's because oil is a global market.  It's all one big pot that is traded on the comex exchange.  That's why if Katrina shuts down oil production in the gulf of mexico, the oil price in India is raised, even though they get most of their oil from the Persian gulf.

 The key thing that everything hinges on though is that oil is priced in dollars.  If oil is priced in dollars all the oil in the world belongs to the United States and is given out to other countries at our discression.  The War in Iraq prevented Iraq from joining the Iranian Oil Market in Feb 2006 that would be denominated in Euros which would have undermined the U.Ss ability to print its way out of oil shortage to the detriment of the other world economy's consumption.  So with Iraq and the Saudis on our side we can prevent the Iranian oil market from gaining a strong foothold.  The war in Iraq was expensive but the end of the petro dollar would have been catastrophic.