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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ed Huang who wrote (2698)	8/12/2003 12:27:40 AM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3959

Rebuilding Iraq Likely to Top War's Cost By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The U.S. bill for rebuilding Iraq (news - web sites) and maintaining security there is widely expected to far exceed the war's price tag, and some private analysts estimate it could reach as high as $600 billion. The Bush administration is offering only hazy details so far, and that is upsetting Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers. The closest the administration has come to estimating America's postwar burden was when L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of occupied Iraq, said last month that "getting the country up and running again" could cost $100 billion and take three years. He estimated that repairing Iraq's electrical grid alone will cost $13 billion and getting the water system in shape will require an additional $16 billion. In a recent interview on CNBC's "Capital Report," Bremer said of rebuilding costs: "It's probably well above $50 billion, $60 billion, maybe $100 billion. It's a lot of money." President Bush (news - web sites) and other administration officials have refused to provide projections, saying too much is unpredictable. That has angered lawmakers of both parties, who are writing the budget for the coming election year even as federal deficits approach $500 billion. "I think they're fearful of having Congress say, 'Oh, my God, this thing is going to be very costly,'" said Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that controls foreign aid. More than three months after Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, even the cost of the ongoing U.S. military campaign remains clouded in confusing numbers. Defense Department officials have said U.S. operations are costing about $3.9 billion monthly. But that figure excludes indirect expenses like replacing damaged equipment and munitions expended in combat. Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s top budget official, has said that when all the costs are combined, he expects U.S. military activities in Iraq to total $58 billion for the nine months from last January through September. That includes part of the buildup, the six weeks of heaviest combat that began March 20, and the aftermath. That sum, however, is what Congress provided this year for Defense Department activities not only in Iraq but also against terrorism worldwide — including Afghanistan (news - web sites), where U.S. military costs are running about $1 billion a month, according to officials. In a report last month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) projected that Pentagon costs in Afghanistan and Iraq plus other U.S. military efforts against terrorism around the globe could reach $59 billion next year. "What is necessary is to achieve an overall strategy and whatever it takes to achieve the strategy, this administration is committed to," Bush told reporters Friday, adding that accurate cost projections would come "next year at the appropriate time." Lawmakers, meanwhile, are girding for a White House request for another $40 billion to $50 billion for 2004. While acknowledging the difficulty of predicting Iraq costs, even White House allies find political factors behind the administration's reluctance to discuss dollars. "They've got one eye on the deficit and they're trying to make sure the conservatives stay with them," said James Dyer, Republican chief of staff for the House Appropriations Committee. "Having said that, we have to pay these bills whether there's a deficit or not." Kolbe, who is traveling with other members of Congress to Iraq and Afghanistan later this month, said the administration's reticence is "undermining the credibility that might exist" for the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq. "We've got to get on with it here and start acknowledging what some of these costs are going to be." Private groups have produced their own estimates on postwar costs in Iraq. Brookings Institution fellows Lael Brainard and Michael O'Hanlon said in a Financial Times article this month that military and reconstruction costs could be from $300 billion to $450 billion. Taxpayers for Common Sense said postwar costs over the next decade could range from $114 billion to $465 billion. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences projected 10-year expenses from $106 billion to $615 billion. Whatever the costs, administration officials have resisted making estimates on how much of them will be shouldered by U.S. taxpayers. They cite several uncertainties: the future numbers and missions of U.S. troops, contributions by allies, and revenue from the hobbled Iraqi oil industry and seized Iraqi assets. story.news.yahoo.com

To: Ed Huang who wrote (2698)	8/12/2003 1:38:46 AM
From: BubbaFred	Respond to of 3959

US soldiers kill two Iraqi policemen in Baghdad Agence France-Presse Baghdad, August 11 US soldiers in Baghdad shot dead an Iraqi policeman they mistook for an attacker and killed another as he tried to surrender. They also beat up a third, a survivor of the incident said on Monday. The three cops were firing from their unmarked car at a suspect vehicle they were chasing on Saturday when the Americans opened fire, Sergeant Hamza Hilal Nahi, who was driving the car, said. Lt Col Muayad Farhan, deputy head of Al-Yarmuk police station where the dead officers were based, confirmed that two of his officers had been shot by coalition forces. However, the US military could not confirm the killings. hindustantimes.com

To: Ed Huang who wrote (2698)	8/12/2003 9:36:47 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3959

Was the Iraq war a conspiracy with people such as Wolfowitz or are they the fall guy. Strange that it is shaping up the same way in the UK. Reporter testifies at British probe Associated Press London — British weapons adviser David Kelly held Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications director responsible for rewriting an intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons program to make it "sexier," a BBC journalist testified Tuesday at an inquiry into Dr. Kelly's suicide. Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corp., said he met Dr. Kelly on May 22 and was told that intelligence officials were concerned that the government had exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Seven days later, in a report for BBC radio, Mr. Gilligan cited an unidentified official as saying the government had inserted a claim into the September dossier that Mr. Hussein could deploy chemical and biological weapons at 45 minutes notice despite knowing that it was unreliable. He said intelligence officials were unhappy with the allegation, as it relied on a single, unreliable source. Subsequently, in an article for the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Mr. Gilligan said government communications director Alastair Campbell was responsible for inserting the detail. The report, vehemently denied by the government, sparked a bitter dispute with the BBC and prompted two parliamentary inquiries into the government's use of intelligence. Mr. Campbell has denied the allegation, and Dr. Kelly testified to a parliamentary committee that he did not believe that Mr. Campbell had transformed the document. "I do not believe that at all," Dr. Kelly told the committee on July 15. Mr. Gilligan told the inquiry, headed by senior appeals judge Lord Hutton, that he had made notes of his meeting with Dr. Kelly in a personal organizer. He read those annotated notes to the inquiry: "Transformed a week before publication to make it sexier, a classic was the 45 minutes, most things in the dossier were double-sourced but that was single-sourced." On the issue of Mr. Campbell's allegedly inserting the 45-minute detail, he said: "Campbell, real information but included against our wishes. … He asked if anything else could go in." Mr. Gilligan insisted that it was Dr. Kelly who first raised Mr. Campbell's name. "He (Dr. Kelly) raised the subject of 45 minutes and he raised the subject of Campbell," he said. Mr. Gilligan did not name Dr. Kelly in his May 29 report, but his name leaked out — and was quickly confirmed by the Ministry of Defence — after weeks of public squabbling between the government and the BBC. He was found dead three days after testifying to the parliamentary committee. Mr. Gilligan said Dr. Kelly believed that Mr. Hussein did have a weapons program but that the threat was not as great as the September dossier suggested. "Dr. Kelly was in no doubt that there was, and he said this and it was one of the things he asked me to say, that there was a WMD program of some sort, but he did not believe the level of threat to the West was as great as the dossier had said," he testified. A second BBC journalist, Susan Watts, who had also spoken with Dr. Kelly, also reported that the government had seized on the 45-minute claim. "It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion," she quoted an unidentified source as saying. "They (the government) were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information which could be released. That was one that popped up, and it was seized on, and it's unfortunate that it was." Dr. Kelly's suicide has plunged Mr. Blair into the worst political crisis of his six years in office, especially as no weapons of mass destruction have yet been found in Iraq. The inquiry heard Monday that intelligence officials were concerned about the 45-minute claim. Martin Howard, deputy chief of defence intelligence, said two members of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff department had written formally expressing concern about the language used in the September dossier, which made the statement sound like a certainty. Mr. Howard said British officials received the 45-minute statement on Aug. 30, less than a month before the publication of the dossier. Julian Miller, chief of the assessments staff of the Cabinet Office, disputed Mr. Gilligan's report that Mr. Blair's government knew the 45-minute statement was wrong before inserting it. theglobeandmail.com