Today, no serious economist holds the view that war is good for the economy. Since the Iraq war began, oil prices have gone from about $25 a barrel at the outset to more than $90 and are rising still higher.

In America, the war has hurt the economy in other ways, the question being not whether the economy has been weakened by the war. The question is only by how much, say Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and Linda Bilmes in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War.

Stiglitz was Chief Economist at the World Bank until January 2000. Bilmes is a lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

The authors say many people around the world, not just in the Middle East believe the US government went to war because it wanted to get its hands on Iraqi oil.

'We aren't going to discuss their arguments here. It is enough to say that if America went to war in the hope of securing cheap oil, we failed miserably. We did, however, succeed in making the oil companies richer. Exxon-Mobile and other oil companies have been among the few real beneficiaries of the war, as their profits and share prices have soared,' they say. Meanwhile, the economy as a whole has paid a high price, the book says.

Oil prices started to soar just as the war began and the longer it has dragged on, the higher prices have gone. "This certainly suggests that the war has something to do with the rising prices," the book says.

The authors say the futures markets- which summarise what buyers and sellers of oil contracts think prices will be in a year or more- provide some insight. Before the war, they thought prices would remain in the range that they had been, $20 to $30, for the next several years.

Futures markets work on the basis of 'business as usual,' that is, they assume nothing out of the ordinary is going to happen. The war in Iraq was the most notable out of the ordinary event at the time prices began to rise and it is hard to identify any other disruption that could be given credit for changes in demand and supply, especially in 2003 and 2004’.

Now 'business as usual' means that the turmoil that the Iraq war let loose will continue, and futures markets are betting that prices will remain high for the next several years, the book says. "We conclude, accordingly, that a significant proportion of the increase in the price of oil resulted from the war", the authors say.

By now it is clear that the US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake. Nearly 4000 US troops have been killed and more than 58,000 wounded. One hundred thousand soldiers have returned from the war suffering serious mental health disorders. Miserable though Saddam Hussain's regime was, life is actually worse for Iraqi people now.