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THE DAILY MIS-LEAD
< http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1316866&l=15012 >
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REPORT: BUSH PLANS $50B IRAQ SPENDING REQUEST POST ELECTION
President Bush and his aides have spent the last year and a half telling the
American people that the war in Iraq would cost little. A new report by
Defense News, however, says the president will propose another $50 billion,
in addition to the $166 billion already spent. According to the non-partisan
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the request "won't come
until after the Nov. 2 presidential election" - effectively concealing the
spending request from public scrutiny.
In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the president's staff conducted a PR
campaign aimed at quelling public concern about its cost. Then White House
Budget Director, Mitch Daniels, said Iraq "will not require sustained aid"
and that the war cost would "be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion."
The president's top reconstruction official at the State Department told
Nightline that "The American part of [reconstruction] will be $1.7 billion
and we have no plans for further-on funding of this." The president's top
economist, Glen Hubbard, said that "costs of any such intervention would be
very small". Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz "dismissed articles in
several newspapers asserting that put cost of war and reconstruction at $60
billion to $95 billion." And Bush had his new Budget Director tell the
Senate that "we don't anticipate requesting anything additional for the
balance of this year" - six weeks before he announced a request for an
additional $87 billion. When White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey
admitted that Iraq could cost up to $200 billion in the fall of 2002, he was
summarily fired for his candor.
Days after the $87 billion request made by the president, the Administration
was questioned by skeptical Republicans and Democrats in Congress about the
rising costs of continued involvement in Iraq. But even then, the president
dispatched Wolfowitz to answer the charges with a flat-out denial. Despite
the public record leading up to it, Wolfowitz told Congress that "No one
said we would know anything other than...this could be very expensive."
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