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| Iraq |
| MSNBC: Iraq Costing US $4 Billion Per Month |
| 2003-07-11 |
| PENTAGON OFFICIALS have avoided divulging the size of the force they anticipated for Iraqi occupation and reconstruction, but a Defense Department report sent to Congress last week conceded that demobilization has not been as rapid as planned. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the monthly cost of operations in Iraq is roughly $3.9 billion. The military has already had to shift about $3.6 billion from an Iraq contingency fund and other military accounts to cover unanticipated costs, according to the report. And the current force in Iraq — about 150,000 troops — will likely remain in the region into the next fiscal year, which begins in October, the report said. Before the war, Defense Department officials hinted that the peacekeeping force would be 40,000 to 60,000 troops. âThe presumption was always that the burn rate would decline rapidly,â said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst at the conservative Lexington Institute. âItâs pretty obvious now that the peacekeeping function substantially exceeds what was anticipated.â Pentagon officials and defense analysts in Congress say the $62.6 billion emergency spending bill that Congress passed just after the war began should cover war costs through the end of this fiscal year. But the messy aftermath — with its guerrilla-like attacks, looting and sluggish rebuilding efforts — threatens to drain the Treasury well into next year and beyond. The $3.9 billion monthly spending rate is nearly double the rate anticipated for longer-term peacekeeping operations, a House Appropriations Committee aide said. Indeed, signs of strain are already beginning to show, according to Defense Department documents. In its most detailed assessment of the cost of the war, the Pentagon said it has already incurred $900 million in unanticipated personnel costs and about $4.1 billion in weapons depot maintenance costs that are âbeyond the scope of the ... programs to absorb.â An additional $612 million in family separation allowances and imminent danger pay demanded by Congress will also have to be covered by shifting funds from other accounts. The military hopes to spend $232 million to replace Air Force transport equipment, $217 million to buy new Tomahawk cruise missiles, $638 million on munitions, $389 million to convert. |
| Posted by:Anonymous |
| #5 The only instances where DemocRATS and their accomplices in the media are concerned about the cost of a government program are a) on defense spending and b) independent counsels investigating other DemocRATS. Screw 'em. |
| Posted by: Raj 2003-7-11 11:21:06 AM |
| #4 His specialty appears to be posting articles that serve up information completely out of context. Actually, I was giving too much credit to the reporter who wrote the article. The big problem with some of these reporters on the military isn't only that they're liberal America-haters - it's that they have absolutely no idea of how the military works - either from an operational (i.e. war) or a bureaucratic perspective. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-11 8:43:19 AM |
| #3 Is this one of those bogus military cost articles? Probably - for the military brass, Iraq is going to be the mother of all scrounging expeditions (from the Federal budget) - not for them personally, but for their respective service branches. It's like Enron's infamous off-balance sheet accounting - every Christmas wish list item will have its day - the costs will simply be buried in Iraq expeditionary costs. For example, shipments will be reported lost to Iraqi attacks that aren't actually destroyed, and orders for new equipment will turn up in the $3.9B funding request. Operational contingencies will somehow dictate that something on the Christmas wish list will be purchased. Why? Because the actual equipment that was supposed to be destroyed still exists - the whole point of all this paperwork, from the military's standpoint, was to get other nice-to-have-but-not-strictly-necessary things that were deleted out of the original military budget. Other symptoms of scrounging could involve stories about how desert sand mysteriously fouled up equipment in ways that did not show up in tests involving sandblasting prior to military-wide deployment. The result? More requests for equipment replacements that get reallocated / reclassed for other wish list items. This is another Anonymous. His specialty appears to be posting articles that serve up information completely out of context. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-7-11 8:36:53 AM |
| #2 Is this one of those bogus military cost articles? For example, is it including the normal costs of having these troops, regardless of where they are? Does it include ordinance that would've been used in practice activity, food they would've eaten anyway, and other NORMAL costs? Etc. Etc. Etc. Sometimes the miltary reports it straight - $X is the additional cost of Mission X. Sometimes, when they're playing the budget-busting game to get more for next cycle, they fudge and include normal costs of doing business with the troops in their barracks on normal duty cycles. Sometime the US has played this game when funding came from foreign sources, such as Gulf War I & the Saudis / Kuwaitis. We made a fucking profit. This is another Anonymous. Way too many fucking Anons, hereabouts. These postings by Anons of anything they can dredge up that they hope is liberal enough to qualify as a troll post is your call, Fred. But this is the last time I'll comment on an obvious troll article or on one posted by an Anon. |
| Posted by: PD 2003-7-11 3:47:20 AM |
| #1 Gee. that's almost $16/month/person based on 250,000,000 people in the U.S. IF we're going to make progress on the War on Terror that, it certainly seems to be worth it to me. |
| Posted by: Ralph 2003-7-11 2:42:55 AM |