http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Rea...df05062004.html

This is an article from an admittedly partisan source. But the article is footnoted and the sources can be checked.



If any posters have other sources regarding this subject, partisan or not, please feel free to share them here.

I think it's a combimation of two options, one more than the other, but of the two I think that the powers that be couldn't know exactly the cost of the war and the occupation, but they knew that there was a possibility that it wouldn't be cheap. The 'break it to them gently' part of the equation.

Now if you look at the $87 billion Congress handed out in October of 2003 which was supposed to last until this coming September, and then the fact that troops would be short $4 this summer, it actually (in the lager sense) isn't to bad. I'm sure if the administration had asked for $91-95 billion instead of the $87, they would of gotten it. And we'll be out of Iraq before we're out of Afghanistan. So if you figure the $25 billion gets split in half it'll be more than enough to finish the job through the fall, and we can get the hell out of Iraq.

So I don't think that the gov't intentionally mislead us or Congress. I think that they didn't forsee the amount of danger the insugency posed and they amount it would cost to fight it. Bear in mind, Iraq has no system of taxation with the exception of some import/export duty (I can't remember which one it was, I know it's in an old post of mine) which I think was at 5%. IOW, Iraqis pay no taxes. Period. So I don't think that we were mislead, but they sure as hell weren't gonna ask for more than they thought could get in '03. They took what they could get.

Titus, I'd agree with you, except for one little thing.

All of these "supplemental" spending bills for the war, so far, have been "off the books" even as far as the money already allocated by Congress. You know, the $75 billion for Afghanistan, the $87 billion (and now another $25 billion) for Iraq.

Which means that the deficit is even larger than currently being reported. By close to a quarter-trillion dollars. That's the "It's an election year, and we don't want to scare the voters" part of the equasion. Except that I think Paladin Elspeth was being polite. It wouldn't necessarily scare the voters to know the true budget deficit, but it surely would make a lot of them angry.

Wars are always fought "off budget."

When DoD submits a budget it only includes peacetime maintainence and training and limited operations ( besides all of the myriad construction and procurement programs). Why? Because it is impossible to forcast what the non-planned operational expenses will be. How much would the congress choke on a budget that annually had an extra $100 billion for contingency operations.

Generally there is enough seed money to start something, but not finish it. The DoD budget cycle is just not set up to handle a war with normal budget operations.

J

I understand that the money for a war not yet fought cannot be put in the budget, because there is no way of telling what future costs are.

But what I'm talking about is money that has already been asked for, approved, allocated, and spent. No "forecasting" necessary, yet the funds still don't show up "on budget".

Why? Because then the government doesn't have to admit that the deficit is much worse than even most people think it is. That's what would make them mad. Not the fact that the deficit is so large, but that the government is hiding just how bad it really is.

But the government doesn't really "hide" the true debt.

The Public Debt Online

You can see month by month how much more in debt we are becoming. It's no secret. Press releases and "news" stories may hide this information, but it's definitely published by the government for anyone who wants to look. These numbers have NOTHING to do with the budget. These are exact amounts that our government has to borrow in order to continue to function. That's more important than a "budgetary" number anyway.