>From The Los Angeles Times, 1/14/07:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...rcost14jan14,0,...
War costs are hitting historic proportions
By Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -
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If U.S. involvement continues on the current scale, the funding for
the Iraq war - combined with the conflict in Afghanistan and other
foreign fronts in the war on terrorism - is projected to surpass this
country's Vietnam spending next year.
And the accumulating cost is adding to resistance to President Bush's
war policy in Congress as well as in public opinion, even though
concern about the cost in human lives, the war's impact on America's
place in the world and other such factors loom larger.
Last week, when Bush unveiled his new war plan - which included
sending an additional 21,500 U.S. troops to Iraq and launching another
effort to provide jobs and public services in Baghdad - the cost
issue
was raised by Republicans as well as Democrats.
But it had been simmering for more than a year.
Members of Congress have talked relatively little about the war's
accumulating price tag because of the human costs, Rep. Zoe Lofgren
(D-San Jose) said.
"But certainly we're cognizant of it," she said.
"When you say for what we're spending in a month in Iraq, you could
fully fund and double the science budgets of the United States and
come up with a viable alternative to oil, it puts it in perspective."
Even so loyal a Republican as Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, who
chaired the budget committee until the Democrats took control of the
Senate this year, criticized the administration's approach to war
costs, calling it "without any discipline as to how much is going to
be spent."
"They're gaming the system," Gregg said.
At a media briefing before Bush's speech Wednesday night, a senior
administration official said the president's plan would entail $5.6
billion in military expenses and $1 billion in reconstruction and
other civilian costs.
In the broad landscape of federal spending, those are not huge
numbers, though $6.6 billion is more than enough to cover the budgets
for all the country's national parks, national forests, historic
monuments, protected wetlands and wildlife refuges for a year.
What makes the cost issue increasingly sensitive is not just questions
about whether it will buy success but also the fact that the new
plan's cost will add to a mountain of bills for earlier military and
reconstruction efforts with what many see as little or no positive
return on the investment.
Some Republicans, especially fiscal conservatives worried about the
deficit, are particularly unhappy because, they say, the president and
the Defense Department have refused to address the war's impact on the
budget in a straightforward way.
Instead of including war costs in the regular budget, such as the one
Bush will send to Congress next month, the administration has been
asking Congress for emergency-spending bills that short-circuit many
of the usual review procedures for appropriating funds.
Bush is spending like a drunken sailor. War costs are hitting historic proportions 
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