soft faced people who did very well out of the war

This is a rather good microcosm of how the last decade went in order of distance from the actual carnage

As U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to deliver his fourth State of the Union address this Tuesday, it's worth commemorating the 10th anniversary of George W. Bush's infamous 2003 SOTU. In that address, Bush's "16 words" about Saddam Hussein pursuing Nigerien yellowcake led to ex post critical op-eds, which led to the politically motivated leaks, which led to the outing of covert operatives, which led to the prosecution of White House officials, which led tocontroversial presidential commutations, which ultimately led to book deals, Vanity Fairspreads, and movies starring Naomi Watts.

I wonder if anyone has actually done an assessment of the ‘Iraq Economy’ over the past ten years in terms of all the paid opinion commissions, lawyers fees, journalist salaries, consultancy gigs, pr and strategic communications budgets, public speaking tours, publishing & movie contracts, conference per diems and kindred largesse – the Baudrillardian Iraq economy as compared to, for instance, the military/security related Iraq economy and finally the actual economy of Iraq.