(Sorry to be late getting back to you. My attention's been fragmented lately.)

My analysis was a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I expected it to be taken that way. It's probably not really productive to wrangle the fine details until the end of time, as we're wont to do.

Comparisons with Alaska and the Louisiana Territory were metaphorical, leading up to my final comment, to which you haven't responded:

What price would Saddam Hussein have put on his little hellhole if we'd bothered to ask first?

You keep asking for alternatives, and that's another. My real cost comparison is war versus simply paying Saddam Hussein to get outta Dodge and let us have his little rathole with little or no bloodshed--essentially purchasing it from him. $5 billion would've paid for a comfy retirement indeed, even if we'd still be paying an inflated price per square kilometer (there just isn't much in Iraq I could see paying $10K/sq.km. for). Could we have accomplished the same end for 1% of the monetary cost and infinitely less human cost? Guess we'll never know. Bush was so focused on war that other options were never on the table.