quote:WASHINGTON -- Two top U.S. defense officials signaled Congress on Wednesday that U.S. forces might remain in Iraq for as long as a decade and that permanent facilities need to be built to house them there.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave no explicit estimates for the time U.S. forces would stay in Iraq, but they did not dispute members of Congress who said the deployment could last a decade or more. The comments were among the most explicit acknowledgements yet from the Bush administration that the U.S. presence in Iraq will be long, arduous, costly and a strain on the military.
Wolfowitz told the House Armed Services Committee that the Bush administration will eventually come to Congress to seek more money for the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wolfowitz said the size of the supplemental funding request will be determined in the fall. But he did not dispute an estimate by Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., that the military would need an annual budget of $54 billion -- $1.5 billion a month for Afghanistan, $3 billion a month for Iraq.
The money would be for costs in fiscal 2004, which starts on Oct. 1 of this year. Former White House budget director Mitch Daniels has said the major combat came in under budget and the administration will not seek additional funds for the Iraq war in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
Pace told the committee that the U.S. force in Iraq is just under its peak of 151,000 combat troops and that the number will not be reduced in the foreseeable future. He said military officials want to build a 60,000-strong Iraqi police force to free U.S. troops for other duties. U.S. troops are now guarding 500 sites and conducting 2,300 patrols a night, Pace said.
Wolfowitz urged Congress to vote for money to train Iraqi and Afghan troops, both to ease the burden on U.S. forces and to free them for other duties, including "a possible contingency in Korea."
In case you were wondering, if that holds true, that is $540 billion for a ten year occupation of Iraq.
Posted by Veers (Member # 661) on :
Ten years?!! That not only will cost us billions, but think of all the soldiers we're gonna lose "keeping the peace!"
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
Personally, I think Wolfowitz is just a little around the bend.
Nevertheless, the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts both proved that tax cuts produce wealth, and thereby (paradoxically, it would seem to most) increase government tax revenues. Weird, to have the Liberal and Conservative icons both showing us the same thing.
Note the heavy use of "did not dispute (insert speculation here)." This means less than it seems to mean. It is futile to dispute a speculation when one does not possess sufficient data.
Posted by Cartmaniac (Member # 256) on :
Yeah, wealth for the select few. Because your average Joe Couchpotatoe doesn't stand to gain anywhere near as much as from tax cuts as, say, the board of Enron would.
So. $54 BILLION, eh? Good luck eliminating deficit spending.
Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
quote:Originally posted by Cartmaniac: Yeah, wealth for the select few. Because your average Joe Couchpotatoe doesn't stand to gain anywhere near as much as from tax cuts as, say, the board of Enron would.
Given that that same "select few" pay the vast majority of the government's income (the top 10% of earners paying 67.3% of the total income taxes collected, the top 5% paying 56.47% of the total) in the first place, that's as it should be. You can't get back money you don't pay.
A little education will help keep you from making foolish statements like that.
[Edit to add]: Oh, and I forgot... where exactly does it say that this will result in a need to INCREASE the military budget? Or "deficit spend?" Really. 54 billion out of a 2.028 trillion dollar budget. That's what, 2.6 percent? The national budget itself increased by 3.8% between 2002 and 2003. Assuming a similar (or greater, due to tax cut stimulation) increase next year, no further deficit spending becomes necessary.
Posted by Daryus Aden (Member # 12) on :
Fantastic economic planners you have there.
First - There may have been what you call wealth creation". But for what % of the population. Oh and by the way, don't forget what it did to interest rates.
By the way are you seriously suggesting that the Reagan economy was better than the Clinton economy?
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
The Conservative government in Ontario is trying to do precisely what Reagan did.
So far, it will appear that the results are very less than ideal.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
Not to worry. The Conservative Government in Ontario is also about to do what Kim Campbell did.
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
What's that? Nothing?
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
I think he is refering to self-destructing. Maybe Eves can be the next Ambassador to Disneyland.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Ten years? U.S. troops are sick of the whole thing already, and it's only been a month or two.
At least the little idiot got slapped down. While Thatcherite/Republican minimal taxes do little good, neither do super high taxes (bear in mind that at one point the upper tax bracket was actually over 100% of earnings during one of the more left wing Labour governments).