Iraq

Lawmakers get impatient for estimate on cost of war

WASHINGTON - Pressed to estimate the cost of future operations in Iraq, the Pentagon has repeatedly said it is just too hard to do.

Now the ranks of disbelievers are growing - in Congress and among private defense analysts. Some say the Bush administration's refusal to estimate costs could erode American support for the Iraq campaign, as well as the credibility of the White House and lawmakers.

"It is crucial that we have every bit of information so we can level with the taxpayer," Democratic Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin recently told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "We don't have that information now."

"The White House plays hide and seek with the costs of the war," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.

The object of their ire is President Bush's proposed defense spending for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 - a $402-billion request that did not include money for the major military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is not just Democrats who disagree with the administration's approach.

Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees have penciled in tens of billions of dollars for the two military campaigns - $30-billion in the Senate, an expected $50-billion in the House - in spending plans they began pushing through Congress this week.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing why costs for Iraq were not included in the administration's budget, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim replied: "Because we simply cannot predict them."

Yet many contend the administration at least knows that roughly 100,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq for another year and could have budgeted an estimate or a placeholder request for that.

"We know it will not be free," said Steve Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Private and congressional analysts, in fact, have done a number of studies and projections of possible costs:

- Daniel Goure of the conservative Lexington Institute said he expects troop levels to gradually drop over five years to one-half or one-third the present deployment - meaning 30,000 to 50,000 Americans troops could remain in Iraq through 2009.

- The Congressional Budget Office a few months ago estimated the cost to occupy Iraq through 2013 at up to $200-billion, depending on troop levels.

White House budget chief Joshua Bolten acknowledged in a briefing with reporters last month that the military will need money over and above the defense request - up to $50-billion the administration will seek in an emergency budget request for Iraq and Afghanistan. It used a similar supplemental spending measure last fall to ask for $87-billion for Afghanistan and Iraq.

But administration officials do not plan to ask for that supplemental, or specify what it might include, until sometime after Jan. 1, 2005 - about two months after November's presidential election.

Had Bush included it in the budget proposal sent to Congress in February, the government's surging deficit problem would have looked even worse.

Zakheim denied last month that the administration was waiting until January so Iraqi expenses wouldn't figure into Bush's re-election bid.

That hasn't convinced everyone.

"The American people are entitled to know before the election, not after the election, at least the estimated costs . . . in dollars . . . lives . . . length of the occupation," said Byrd.

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