posted on February 26, 2003 06:48:57 PM new
President Bush today in a speech asked Congress for $94 Billion dollars to start with to go to War with Iraq. He also laid out his plans for a post-Saddam effort. He said that we'd be there as long as we need to be there (?) and that we'd rebuild Iraq using Iraqi Oil.
However, when asked, President Bush confirmed that Iraqi Oil will NOT be used to reimburse America's costs in this War effort!
Questions are now arising from all sectors wanting to know just how in the Hell Bush plans to pay all of this.
I am 100% AGAINST us granting him the money for this War until he submits a SOLID plan approved by the top economists in this country and so should YOU to stop runaway borrowing and spending!
posted on February 26, 2003 09:05:39 PM new
Well, he's never had a coherent and/or straightforward plan about anything that I've been able to discern. Most of his communication is cliche and soundbyte; he usually refuses to answer questions; and he vehemently attacks or denigrates anyone who seems to oppose any position that he takes on almost any issue. I can't recall his ever attempting to clearly and factually explain any proposal or assertion that he's made.
He has been pointedly trying to soften his image the last few days. And Rumsfeld and others of his ilk have been muzzled for the time being. The rhinestone cowboy persona is not playing well at home or abroad.
The article below is an excellent analysis but it contains one very puzzling paragraph......
"There were also indications that close associates of the Bush family were expressing private concerns about the fissures that have opened between Washington and its major partners in Europe and Asia."
Everything else in the article is fairly clear except for that paragraph.
posted on February 26, 2003 10:31:36 PM new
Whee's all of the jacka**es that were making such dopey comments the last time that I asked where the money is going to come from? You know the ones. They are the ones who wrote asinine posts saying that Iraqi Oil wouold be reimbursing us for our costs, like as if it was stupid to ask such a question as mine was. Where are they now? Huh?
By Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 27, 2003; Page A12
Democrats attacked the White House yesterday for withholding details about the likely cost of a war in Iraq, even as some internal administration estimates soared past $100 billion.
White House officials said they would ask Congress to fund a war in Iraq only after hostilities began. Lawmakers complained that the policy would essentially lock them into a pay-as-you-go war.
The rising estimates opened a new line of attack for Democrats, who plan to use a war's effect on the budget deficit as a further reason to oppose the president's new tax cut proposals. Conservatives, meanwhile, fretted anew about the administration's appetite for spending.
Administration officials said the Pentagon's estimate of $60 billion to $95 billion for a war and its immediate aftermath was certain to be eclipsed when the long-term costs of occupation, reconstruction, foreign aid and humanitarian relief were figured in. Bush was briefed on the war costs Tuesday and is scheduled to receive detailed budget scenarios in the next week or two, officials said.
If Bush secured all of his legislative proposals, a $95 billion war would raise the 2003 deficit to $400 billion, according to White House budget figures. That would surpass the record $290 billion deficit of 1992, even after adjusting for inflation.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) yesterday said the costs of a war would be "staggering," including the possibility of higher oil prices, unsettled financial markets and payments to win the support of allies.
"This government is going to have to borrow the money to finance this war," Byrd said on the Senate floor. "The total price of a war in Iraq could easily add up to hundreds of billions of dollars -- even a trillion or more -- overwhelming a federal budget which is already sliding into deep deficits and warping the U.S. economy."
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said the administration "must clearly explain from where this funding will come" and "must tell the American people the full story about Iraq."
White House officials said Bush would not, as many congressional appropriators had expected, make a pre-war supplemental budget request for foreseeable expenses and for ones that have already been incurred, including those for the shipment of food and medicine to Persian Gulf states in anticipation of a war-induced refugee crisis.
"When the administration has something that is ready to get sent up to the Hill, if there is something, we will share it," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said yesterday. If a war takes place, he said, the budget request would be made immediately or shortly after the fighting starts.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking to reporters yesterday about war-related costs, said: "To pretend that someone can even marginally, usefully speculate on that, when no decision has been made, is obviously not, I don't think, a very useful exercise."
Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the administration could not be expected to ask for money before it had more of a sense of how a war would actually go. "They have produced a reasonable guess, but that's all it is now," O'Hanlon said.
Pentagon officials estimate that after victory was secured, U.S. forces could be drawn down to about 50,000 troops, who would stay well into a second year. Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, chief of staff of the Army, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be needed to secure postwar Iraq, although the administration expected other nations to contribute many of them.
Some military experts believe that may prove optimistic, given the difficulties of the task. They think that a large number of combat-ready U.S. troops would be necessary to hold together Iraq's three disparate parts -- the Kurdish north, the Shiite south and the Sunni middle -- and also to deter neighboring nations such as Iran and Turkey from extending their influence deeper into contiguous parts of Iraq.
Thus, some in the Pentagon worry that with just 10 divisions and about 480,000 troops, the Army isn't large enough to handle a peacekeeping task in Iraq, its continuing mission in Afghanistan, its contributions in the Balkans and the face-off on the Korean Peninsula.
Even some conservative Republicans are growing restive in the face of the rising war cost estimates and the burgeoning deficits. The House conservatives' Republican Study Committee circulated a pointed, one-page document yesterday contrasting Bush's budgetary response to budget deficits to the responses of Ronald Reagan in 1982 and of congressional Republicans in 1996 and 1997.
Their conclusion? Reagan proposed nondefense spending over three years that was $226 billion less than it would have been had it merely kept pace with inflation. The five-year budget resolutions passed by Republicans in 1996 and 1997 cut nondefense spending subject to Congress's annual oversight by $123 billion and $105 billion, respectively. In contrast, Bush's 2004 budget allows nondefense discretionary spending to rise by $16 billion over inflation through 2008.
Staff writers Helen Dewar, Dan Morgan and Thomas E. Ricks contributed to this report.
