December 30, 2002: Iraq War Could Cost Between $50-$60 Billion Dollars - Bush Administration

[Rage for Order]

http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2003/ajan/2_whitehouse.html

By Elisabeth Bumiller
www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 - The administration's top budget official (Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget) estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials.

Mr. Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.

Mr. Daniels cautioned that his budget projections did not mean a war with Iraq was imminent, and that it was impossible to know what any military campaign against Iraq would ultimately cost. This is nothing more than prudent contingency planning," Mr. Daniels said from his home in Indianapolis, where he was reviewing the fiscal 2004 budget at his kitchen table. "At this point there is no war."

The budget director's projections today served as a more politically palatable corrective to figures put forth by Mr. Lindsey in September, when he said that a war with Iraq might amount to 1 percent to 2 percent of the national gross domestic product, or $100 billion to $200 billion. Mr. Lindsey added that as a one-time cost for one year, the expenditure would be "nothing."

Mr. Lindsey was criticized inside and outside the administration for putting forth such a large number, which helped pave the way for his ouster earlier this month. He could not be reached for comment this evening. (Congressional Democrats have estimated that the cost would be $93 billion, not including the cost of peacekeeping and rebuilding efforts after a war.)

But today, Mr. Daniels sought to play down his former colleague's remarks. "That wasn't a budget estimate," he said. "It was more of a historical benchmark than any analysis of what a conflict today might entail."



As usual, this administration was right on the mark!

(spelling edit in title of OP)

[Rage for Order]

1. And then there's this from today

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/26/AR2007092600732.html

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates asked Congress yesterday to approve an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the Bush administration's 2008 war funding request to nearly $190 billion -- the largest single-year total for the wars so far.

The administration's funding request...would boost war spending this year by nearly 15 percent and would bring the total cost of both conflicts to more than $800 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service.



But then, what's a minor error like $750 billion among friends, right?

[Rage for Order]

2. kick

to remind everyone of the scope of bush's incompetence and/or deceit

[walldude]

3. Hell there were guys like Paul Wolfowitz who were claiming

that the war would "pay for itself" with oil revenues. The numbers are getting so big I almost can't wrap my brain around it.