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To: jackhach who wrote (8952)	3/19/2003 3:29:20 AM
From: bob zagorin	Respond to of 13797

March 19, 2003 12:27 a.m. EST CAPITAL JOURNAL By JOHN HARWOOD, Political Editor Wall Street Journal Bush Faces Republican Fire On Postwar Costs for Iraq WASHINGTON -- If you wonder about the challenge ahead in putting Iraq back together, consider what happened when the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sought testimony from President Bush's reconstruction point man: The administration said no. Americans can hope the war Mr. Bush is preparing to launch will take only weeks. But they need to know that the transformation of Iraq into the democratic society he envisions will take years -- and carry a fat price tag. In particular, the Republicans who control Congress need to know it. For as he undertakes the job, Mr. Bush risks friendly fire from members of his party. GIRDING FOR WAR • See an interactive map1 breaking down U.S. military preparations, including key staging areas and a rundown on weapons. • For continuing coverage, see War With Iraq.2 Mr. Bush has embraced a "sustained commitment" to Iraq's postwar rehabilitation -- but his party hasn't. The partisans who once cheered his campaign criticism of "nation building" weren't just piling on Bill Clinton; they were reflecting a current in Republican sentiment the White House now must navigate. So far, administration officials have obscured the cost of war and reconstruction. Instead of asking Congress to supplement its 2003 budget -- by an amount that could approach $100 billion -- they are waiting for the start of war to ignite a surge in public support. With Americans cranky about their own economic problems, that's a strategy for avoiding near-term political erosion. But it's not the way to lay a foundation for the audacious enterprise Mr. Bush has sent U.S. troops to fight for. "The price of a successful war against terrorism is a successful state" in Iraq once the combat is over, asserts Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, who heads the Foreign Relations Committee. The administration should seek plenty of money now, he says, because after that "highwater mark" of support it will grow harder to sustain congressional majorities. How much will it cost? Try $20 billion a year indefinitely, says a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force co-led by Thomas Pickering, United Nations ambassador under the current president's father during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. That's for rebuilding the country's shattered infrastructure, providing food, shelter and medicine for millions of Iraqi civilians, and preventing bloody reprisals among rival ethnic and religious groups. If the job requires significantly more than 75,000 U.S. troops, which the task force calls a real possibility, then "the funding requirement would be much greater." Inside Republican cloakrooms, senators talk of using Iraqi oil revenue to help defray such costs. But that won't help anytime soon if Saddam Hussein mutilates his country's oil industry on the way to military defeat. In the House, Republican leaders want the very countries the U.S. has alienated during the recent U.N. dust-up to handle postwar occupation and reconstruction -- and pick up the check. "We will neither have to play the lead role in that effort, nor will we be the leader in providing the financing," insists House Republican Whip Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri. He also calls the council task force's cost estimates "too high." That sounds like wishful thinking, even if the U.N., France and others look past today's estrangement and find political and economic reasons to help the U.S. But that wariness of shouldering international burdens is an inescapable result of the populist infusion that has altered and expanded the Republican base over the past generation. Many of these new Republicans loathe foreign aid. There's every reason to think they'll loathe assistance for Iraq once the war's patriotic glow has faded, the 2004 campaign is at hand, and Mr. Bush asks Congress to finance America's burden while the federal budget is awash in red ink. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebrasaka says Iraq will accelerate "a real internal debate" about the party's overseas commitments. His fellow internationalist, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, took a stand Tuesday by vowing to oppose Mr. Bush's cherished tax-cut plan until the nation's costs for Iraq become clear. Mr. Bush's advisers count on victory to strengthen his hand -- on Iraqi reconstruction and everything else. "I wouldn't want to be the Democrat to stand up and say bring our troops home," a senior White House official says. But in this low-margin, party-line presidency, it isn't Democrats Mr. Bush needs to worry about. It's nervous Republicans -- the kind who once tried to limit funding for the comparatively tiny U.S. troop deployment in Kosovo three years ago. At the time, the House voted to end the deployment unless others paid more of the tab. Senate Republicans, along with a few Democrats, were poised to pass a similar restriction until a candidate to succeed Mr. Clinton blasted it as "legislative overreach." That candidate was George W. Bush, expending political capital to keep Republicans from constraining a peace-keeping mission. To succeed over the long term in Iraq, he'll need to do that again and again. Write to John Harwood at john.harwood@wsj.com3

To: jackhach who wrote (8952)	3/19/2003 9:42:15 AM
From: Greg h2o	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13797

nothing like the left bashing a man for his belief in God. i go to Sunday school, as well. i actually teach our adult class. want to bash me for those beliefs? as for harming international relationships, how about the understanding that there are FORTY FIVE countries backing this war effort in one way or another. the biggest antagonist in the international effort to disarm Iraq has been France... followed closely by Germany and Russia. those aren't exactly bastions of international diplomacy.