As Robert Byrd said today, Bush’ bill for war costs is only a downpayment. How else do we make sense of the $ 3.5 Billion slated for Iraqi relief and reconstruction? It sounds like a lot, but here’s the rough breakdown (from the OMB website): $1B for oil field repair, $1.7B for infrastructure repair, $.7B for humanitarian assistance. That is, we’re budgeting enough to cover the immediate aftermath of the war, maybe, but no resources that could help reconstruct Iraq as a vibrant democracy. Which makes me come to one of three conclusions:
A) Bush is basically telling Western Europe that he expects them to pick up the tab. We paid only $9B out of the $80B price tag for Gulf War I, and it’s likely that the administration will try to use Europe’s desire to patch things up as a means to get them to contribute to the costs this time around as well.
B) Bush is not giving the full cost of what he expects, in order to minimize political resistance to his budget. After all, he withheld the current request until the tax cut was approved by Congress.
C) We will not be engaging in full reconstruction of Iraq after all. This wouldn’t be exactly a broken promise, as it was less the administration who proposed the “kitchen of democracy” plan than the ideologues in thinktanks and neo-con publications. Still, after fighting for Iraqi liberation, to reneg on its costs will seem a betrayal.
B seems the most probable, though all may apply.
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