NYT's Herbert: George Bush's trillion dollar war

RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday March 22, 2006

"Call it the trillion dollar war," writes Bob Herbert in his New York Times column scheduled for Thursday's edition, RAW STORY has learned.

Herbert cites a recent study entitled "The Economic Costs of the Iraq War" undertaken by a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Harvard University budget expert which suggested that, in all, the total may end up between one and two trillion dollars.

Excerpts from the Op-Ed column:

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George W. Bush's war in Iraq was never supposed to be particularly expensive. Administration types tossed out numbers like $50 billion and $60 billion. When Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, said the war was likely to cost $200 billion to $200 billion, he was fired.

Some in the White House tried to spread the fantasy that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war. Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk, told Congress that Iraq was "a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

The president and his hot-for-war associates were as wrong about the money as they were about the weapons of mass destruction.

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At his news conference on Tuesday, President Bush made it clear that whatever the cost, U.S. forces would not be leaving Iraq soon. When asked whether a day would come when there were no U.S. forces in Iraq, he said that decision would be made by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

The meter's running. We're at a trillion dollars, and counting.

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New York Times Select subscribers can read the rest of Herbert's column at this link.