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Cost of Bush's war? Just keep adding zeroes
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| Contributor | Servo |
| Last Edited | Servo Oct 01, 2006 08:45pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| News Date | Monday, October 2, 2006 02:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | It was only four years ago when Lawrence Lindsey, then-head of the White House's National Economic Council, estimated that the "upper bound" of the cost of going to war with Iraq would be between $100-billion and $200-billion.
The massive size of that estimate scandalized the Bush administration. Up until then, the Pentagon had been privately telling Congress to expect a cost of about $50-billion.
By February 2003, just weeks before the invasion, the numbers coming out of the Defense Department had grown to between $60-billion and $95-billion. But even then, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense at the time, was telling Congress that the upper range was too high and that Iraq's oil wealth would offset some of the cost. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," Wolfowitz told a congressional committee.
Well, we've kissed the $200-billion limit goodbye long ago. We're currently out of pocket more than $400-billion and adding to the bill at the rate of $8-billion per month. Iraq's oil riches have contributed nothing at all.
So what's the current upper-range estimate? Trillions. |
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