The Clipboard: Rumsfeld Doubles Estimate for Cost of Troops in Iraq

From an article¹:

Under intense questioning from Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, Mr. Rumsfeld or his aides telephoned Pentagon financial officers during a break and reported back to the committee that cost estimates for the Iraq campaign had reached $3.9 billion per month, on average from this past January through September.

A Pentagon official said the $3.9 billion figure "is the estimated cost to maintain the current force level in Iraq," which includes expenses for military operations, including fuel, transportation, food, ordnance and personnel, but not reconstruction costs. The $3.9 billion figure is almost double the $2 billion per month estimate issued by administration officials in April. In addition, the cost of operations in Afghanistan are now $900 million to $950 million monthly, Mr. Rumsfeld said. (link, registration required)

So that's $3.9 billion dollars a month for Iraq plus about $1 billion a month for Afghanistan for a grand total of nearly $5 billion a month. To put this in context, the Congressional Budget office reports that the government spent $192 billion dollars a month total in May 2003 so the war costs are about 2.5% of the entire federal budget.

There are two things that really get me about this. First, we allegedly don't have the money to fund improvements in social programs and taxpayers allegedly aren't willing to pay the extra money to fund them. Yet we have all this money to invade and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq? The $60 billion a year that these military adventures cost would allow us to spend one quarter again as much on Medicare or half again as much on Medicaid (based on spending for fiscal year 2002). So are taxpayers actually willing to spend the extra money after all? If we're going to spend this much money, I'd sure rather see it spent on helping people in America meet their basic needs than on making war.

Then there's the second thing: the tax cut. We're increasing spending at the same time as we decrease revenue. I sure wish I could run my household budget like that. No money? No problem! I wonder how high support for the war would be if people realized what the costs to them will be, if they realized that eventually taxes are going to have to go up to pay for it. I think support would drop pretty fast. Forget all the fuss about faulty intelligence on WMDs. Even if all those claims had proved to be true, the war is still based on a lie: that we can have this war and not have to pay for it.

The Republicans are not the party of fiscal responsibility. They're not even a party of fiscal sanity right now.

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Complete text of the article, Rumsfeld Doubles Estimate for Cost of Troops in Iraq, by Thom Shanker (registration required for offsite link)

Gen. Tommy R. Franks said today that violence and uncertainty in Iraq made it unlikely that troop levels would be reduced "for the foreseeable future," and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld nearly doubled the estimated military costs there to $3.9 billion a month.

"We have about 145,000 troops in there right now," General Franks told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said he had talked to "commanders at every level inside Iraq," and found that the size and structure of those forces were appropriate for the current situation.

Mr. Rumsfeld has never laid out a timetable for bringing American troops home, and has repeatedly pledged that the forces would stay as long as required, but no longer. Even so, the acknowledgement today of the scope of the long-term military commitment to Iraq was the strongest indication to date that the reconstruction effort requires the continued deployment of large numbers of troops - and that the undertaking carries a hefty price tag.

Under intense questioning from Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, Mr. Rumsfeld or his aides telephoned Pentagon financial officers during a break and reported back to the committee that cost estimates for the Iraq campaign had reached $3.9 billion per month, on average from this past January through September.

A Pentagon official said the $3.9 billion figure "is the estimated cost to maintain the current force level in Iraq," which includes expenses for military operations, including fuel, transportation, food, ordnance and personnel, but not reconstruction costs. The $3.9 billion figure is almost double the $2 billion per month estimate issued by administration officials in April. In addition, the cost of operations in Afghanistan are now $900 million to $950 million monthly, Mr. Rumsfeld said.

During a grueling four-hour hearing, committee members alternately complimented the military's war plan but criticized the Pentagon's planning for the postwar stabilization of the nation.

In particular, Mr. Rumsfeld was pressed to detail efforts to reach out to allies - including those like France and Germany who opposed the war - for contributions of troops to replace Americans. General Franks, who stepped down this week from the top job at Central Command, gave no indication that commanders were requesting more troops to combat guerrilla-style attacks. When pressed to predict how long a force comparable to the current one would be needed, he said, "It is for the foreseeable future."

Moments later, Mr. Rumsfeld sought to erase the impression that those comments meant that the American commitment could not shrink more rapidly. "The numbers of U.S. forces could change, while the footprint stayed the same, in the event that we have greater success in bringing in additional coalition forces, in the event we are able to accelerate the Iraqi Army," he said.

With American forces suffering almost daily attacks in Iraq, that statement did not satisfy Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who challenged Mr. Rumsfeld by saying that "we have the world's best-trained soldiers serving as policemen in what seems to be a shooting gallery." Mr. Kennedy said that "the lack of a coherent plan is hindering our efforts at internationalization and aggravating the strain on our troops."

Mr. Rumsfeld said 142,000 military personnel had returned to their home bases, although most of those serve in the Air Force and Navy, leaving the burden in Iraq to American ground forces. The current ground force figure, 145,000, is down from its peak of 151,000. And he announced the withdrawal of one high-profile unit from the war zone, saying all three brigades of the Third Infantry Division, which spearheaded the attack on Baghdad, would leave Iraq by September.

In sketching how Iraqis will help stabilize their nation, General Franks said that 35,000 Iraqi police officers had been hired and that plans called for training a new Iraqi army of 12,000 within one year and 40,000 within three years.

As recently as May, senior allied officials speaking to correspondents in Baghdad said the Bush administration had hoped to shrink the American military presence in Iraq to two divisions, about 30,000 to 40,000 troops, by autumn, with a third multinational division also present.

Answering complaints that American unilateralism had alienated its allies, Mr. Rumsfeld and General Franks said that 19 nations now had forces supporting the Iraq effort, that 19 others had promised troops and that discussions were under way with 11 more. Those allied forces already in Iraq, and those committed, totaled 30,000, they said.

Asked by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, if he would support having France and Germany take part in the postwar stability force, Mr. Rumsfeld said he would. "We have reached out to NATO," Mr. Rumsfeld said. But he cautioned that "it would be incorrect to say that we expect that international forces will replace all of U.S. forces. We don't anticipate that."

Mr. Rumsfeld refused to issue a concrete schedule for withdrawing American forces. "Nobody knows the answer to that question, how long it will take," he said. "It will take some time." But he said that "when it's done, it's going to have been darn well worth having done."

Senators from both parties - James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island - pressed Mr. Rumsfeld on whether the Pentagon should consider increasing the number of people in uniform to handle global missions. "It seems to me that we have to be prepared to increase our Army, the number of brigades in our Army, or to activate National Guard divisions, and we have to make that decision soon," Mr. Reed said. Mr. Rumsfeld said there were no plans to expand the military.

Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, asked Mr. Rumsfeld about the threat from Iran, and Mr. Rumsfeld said he had received reports that Iran had relocated some border posts a few miles into Iraqi territory, and he cautioned the government in Tehran against such adventurism.

reference=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/international/worldspecial/10MILI.html