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Politics : PRESIDENT JOHN FORBES KERRY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (398)	3/6/2004 5:46:42 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1017

Interesting commentary from a former Denver Bronco football player... ____________________ Bush's Shell Game by Reggie Rivers* The Denver Post President George W. Bush is a habitual exaggerater and minimizer. About this time last year, he was making hyperbolic statements about Saddam Hussein's alleged stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. We've since learned that Hussein didn't have these munitions, and the president has received well-deserved criticism for exaggerating the risk, spending billions of dollars and losing hundreds of American lives to launch a preemptive war against a dictator who did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. President Bush's defenders argue that none of this misinformation was his fault. The president was merely relaying the best information available at the time, so blame the CIA for the intelligence failure, not the president. Although I believe President Bush deliberately lied, I'm not a mind reader, so I concede that it's possible that he believed he was telling the truth. However, it's tough to apply that same defense to Bush's continuous obfuscation of the costs of war. You'll recall that prior to the invasion of Iraq a year ago, President Bush absolutely refused to estimate how much taxpayer money he would spend. Bush's supporters offered many excuses at the time, suggesting that war was an unpredictable beast, and that it was not possible to pin down exact costs. They suggested that the president was still negotiating with his "coalition of the willing," so he didn't yet know how much other countries would contribute troops and money. Congress was frustrated, too. Despite a build-up of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the Middle East, the continuous delivery of equipment and supplies, and clear evidence that war was imminent, President Bush didn't include war funding in his annual budget request. Congress passed the budget at the end of January, and on March 19, 2003, President Bush launched the war in Iraq. Just six days later, on March 25, the president made a supplemental appropriations request of $74.7 billion to pay for the initial stages of the war. This is the type of deliberate manipulation that is the president's stock and trade. Surely, we're not expected to believe that President Bush had no idea what the war would cost in January, but in March somehow knew he'd need $74.7 billion just for the initial phase. On Sept. 27, President Bush, somehow overcoming the complexities of war that make it impossible to estimate costs, asked for and received an additional $87 billion for the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, President Bush is at it again. He recently submitted his budget request for 2005, and while he's bumped military spending up to $401.7 billion, he has deliberately ignored the continuing costs of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Marine Corps Gen. Michael Hagee and Air Force Gen. John Jumper were so concerned about this omission that they made an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee to voice their displeasure over Bush's budget request. The generals revealed that they're spending a combined $5 billion a month in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they're worried that if they're not included in the budget, they won't have funds when September arrives. President Bush has told them not to worry. They'll get their money. He didn't include war costs in his spending request apparently because he wanted to make the budget look smaller to the American people as they head to the polls to vote. White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten said the Bush administration will cover the gap in military funding by making a supplemental funds request for $50 billion in January - after the election. President Bush's manipulative shell games fool only his supporters. The rest of us can see that he uses exaggeration and minimization to trick us into supporting things that we wouldn't support if we knew the truth. *Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers is the host of "Drawing the Line" Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on KBDI Channel 12, Denver. Copyright 2004 The Denver Post commondreams.org