Do we know what the war in Iraq is costing us?
The following post is the last one I read on the subject.
>>>>>>>>
Senate kills attempt to account for Iraq spending
By Mary Dalrymple, Associated Press, 7/16/2003 13:30
WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate refused Wednesday to force
the Bush administration to specify precisely the cost of continuing
military operations in Iraq, defeating a Democratic attempt to use a
defense spending bill to criticize its conduct of the war.
The vote was 53-41 to kill a proposal by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.,
to force the administration to submit an amendment to the pending
$368.6 billion overall defense spending bill stating the costs.
''It's impossible to know what the cost will be of fighting this
war in advance,'' said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman
of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Dorgan said the administration knows it's spending $4 billion
a month in Iraq and it makes little sense to pretend the costs do not exist.
Democrats have repeatedly criticized Bush for not aggressively seeking
more international forces to police Iraq and help oversee its reconstruction
as American soldiers continue to die in attacks from Iraqi resistance elements.
''Our men and women in uniform, doing courageous work, find themselves
in a near shooting-gallery environment in Iraq, with very little contribution from
allies and the world,'' Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., said Tuesday.
Johnson's son, Staff Sgt. Brooks Johnson, returned from Iraq in
May after serving with the 101st Airborne Division during the war.
Asked whether the White House feared the Democrats using the Iraq criticism as a political issue, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: ''The American people recognize that some
are more focused on elections, and possibly even revising history or rewriting history.''
''The president's remaining focused on his priorities for the American people that's winning the war on terrorism, which the battle in Iraq was about, and protecting the homeland and strengthening our economy.''
McClellan said he saw ''good, steady progress in Iraq in terms of reconstruction and stability and moving toward a democracy.'' But as he spoke during his morning news briefing, however, the U.S. military announced that the pro-American mayor of Hadithah in western Iraq was shot and killed Wednesday along with one of his nine sons.
Democrats prepared to use the $368.6 billion Pentagon bill to force debates Wednesday over issues ranging from the cost of the Iraq war to the detention of enemy combatants in the war against terrorism.
The measure represents a Defense Department budget increase of a little over 1 percent for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, not counting a $62.4 billion emergency spending bill passed earlier this year to cover the cost of war in Iraq.
Likewise, the 2004 bill does not include additional money to support the costs of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which probably will be financed by another emergency spending bill.
Dorgan, D-N.D., is leading an effort to force the administration to immediately
request additional money for the military operations in both nations.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., also wants the administration to turn over
the names and nationalities of each individual held as an enemy combatant
and disclose whether the government will charge, repatriate or release each of them.
Republicans mustered a strong majority to turn back the Senate's most vocal critic
of the war on Tuesday as he attempted to limit the deployment of National Guard
and Reserve forces around the world.
The 64-31 vote killed a proposal by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., to limit National
Guard and Reserve overseas missions to six months, once a year.
The Defense Department reported last week that 204,100 Guard and
Reserve forces were now mobilized to active duty.
Stevens, who oversees the defense budget, said the deployments
are already limited to 180 days, not including time spent preparing and returning from an operation.
But he and other Republicans acknowledged the pressures faced by those forces when they are deployed to repeated missions abroad and promised to study the problem.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week the Pentagon needs to reassess how it uses those forces and look at possibly shifting some of their duties to the regular armed forces.
''We ought to have on active duty the kinds of people that are going to be needed for longer-term chores, or tasks which are going to frequently come up,'' Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. ''We can't keep calling the same people up four, five, six times. It's just not right.''
Iraq's U.S. administrator said Tuesday American troops will need to remain in Iraq until constitution and a democratic government are in place. The remarks by L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. official in Iraq, marked the first time U.S. administrator linked the length of the mission to the political process.
American soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division, who fought the war and stayed to establish the peace, were told they will probably be brought home in September. Officials refused to make firm promises.
Those soldiers and their families had been led to believe the troops would return home once major fighting in Baghdad was over, but they have stayed while most other troops have been sent home.
The bill also blocks funds for the Terrorism Information Awareness program, a Bush surveillance initiative to cull records for evidence of terrorist activity. The administration said the provision will ''deny an important potential tool in the war on terrorism.''
The bill is S.1382.
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