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It’s not too soon to talk about the problems the winner of Tuesday’s election will face. One of the biggest is the hemorrhaging cost of the war in Iraq.
The Bush administration, which got an early $25 billion down payment for the new fiscal year with the certainty of asking for more, has left the 2005 war budget’s bottom line conveniently blank until after the voters have spoken. But the estimates already circulating say that the president will have to ask for as much as $70 billion more and that the next Congress will have to approve the request in February if the military burdens of Iraq, and to a smaller extent Afghanistan, are to be faced realistically.
If a one-year price tag of $95 billion materializes from the Pentagon budget estimates that are now being prepared, it will drive the war costs to $225 billion and counting since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Capitol Hill lawmakers, already locked into a decade of deficit spending, are in denial about the skyrocketing costs. Republicans eagerly pointed out this week that the final numbers were not yet in.
That’s true, but there is little doubt about the general size of the next budget request. Whatever the final number is, it will reflect the hard fact that Iraq is draining far more in blood and treasure than was ever anticipated before the administration’s dream of a tidy war turned to ashes. The White House confidently estimated last February that the war’s annual cost was unlikely to exceed $50 billion. But that estimate was based on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s odd notion that the United States could conquer, hold and rebuild Iraq with just a few divisions - and Mr. Rumsfeld believed that most of them would have been home by now. The White House also failed to account for the possibility that the Iraqis might resist the occupation, much less for the fierce insurgency that took hold.
Costs rose as the Pentagon was forced to maintain tens of thousands more troops in Iraq than it had planned, straining the Army to the point where some 90 percent of its men at arms are either in Iraq, headed to Iraq or rotating out of Iraq for much-needed rest. Now there are demands for even more soldiers to try to secure enough of Iraq to attempt face-saving elections in January. The Pentagon, scrambling to cover costs, can no longer defer maintenance and other vital needs, but its ability to repair and service battlefield equipment is stretched to the limit. The generals have had to shoot down as unrealistic the election-timed leaks from the administration about grand plans to shorten soldiers’ 12-month tours.
Both John Kerry and President Bush have vowed to stay in Iraq until it is stabilized. If so, they’ll have to come to grips with a staggering bill.