From The New York Times, 7/30/03:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/30/international/worldspecial/30POST.html
Senators Assail 2 Officials for Lack of Postwar Details
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON --
Senators from both parties today assailed two senior Bush
administration officials for refusing to spell out how much the
postwar effort in Iraq would cost and how many American troops would
be needed.
In a contentious three-hour hearing before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, President Bush's budget director, Joshua B.
Bolten, and deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, said it was
difficult, if not impossible, to make those forecasts given the fluid
security situation in Iraq and the Pentagon's effort to recruit
foreign forces to help replace American troops.
The Pentagon says it is costing $3.9 billion a month to keep nearly
150,000 American troops in Iraq, but the officials today refused to
say what the future costs and troop levels might be, or how high the
reconstruction bill could run.
Mr. Bolten said the total reconstruction costs this year would be
about $7.3 billion.
Democrats in particular, but even some Republicans, scolded the two
officials, warning them that public support hinged on candid
administration estimates of future costs, even if they were rough
figures.
Some senators suggested that the vagueness masked a postwar plan that
was adrift.
"Because of some combination of bureaucratic inertia, political
caution and unrealistic expectations left over from before the war, we
do not appear to be confident about our course in Iraq," Senator
Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee, said in a statement.
Other Republicans were equally blunt.
"I think you, Mr. Bolten, should be more forthright in terms of what
the costs are going to be so that we have some idea, and the American
people, how long, how much," said Senator George V. Voinovich,
Republican of Ohio.
Several lawmakers accused Mr. Wolfowitz, an architect of the
administration's Iraq policy who recently returned from a five-day
trip there, of sugarcoating the problems of stabilizing the country,
and of dwelling on what the administration has called Iraq's role in
global terrorism, to the exclusion of other threats.
Senator Lincoln Chafee, Republican of Rhode Island, accused Mr.
Wolfowitz of "shifting the justification of what we're doing" in Iraq
from the threat of Iraq's presumed unconventional weapons to Saddam
Hussein's three decades of tyrannical rule. Using that rationale, Mr.
Chafee said, the administration should drop its reluctance to
intervene in Liberia.
But the testiest exchanges came between Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of
Delaware, the panel's ranking Democrat, and Mr. Bolten and Mr.
Wolfowitz.
Mr. Biden asked if the government expected to continue spending nearly
$4 billion a month on the troops into 2004.
"We don't have any reason to expect a dramatic change in that number,
but I wouldn't want to predict beyond the next couple of months,
because the situation is so variable," Mr. Bolten said.
Mr. Biden said lawmakers would soon vote on a fiscal 2004 budget, and
insisted that Mr. Bolten be more precise.
"What the devil are you going to ask us for?" Mr. Biden demanded.
Mr. Bolten acknowledged that the administration could not accurately
estimate the costs of troops or reconstruction, "simply because we
don't know what they will be."
At that point, Mr. Biden exclaimed:
"Oh, come on now. Does anybody here at the table think we're going to
be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year?"
He added, "When are you guys starting to be honest with us?"
Then Mr. Wolfowitz jumped in to defend the administration. He spoke of
the urgency to provide security, jobs and essential services like
electricity to Iraqis, before they turned against the American
occupation.
"I'm not happy with where we are right now," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
"If there's any way to accelerate anything, we are looking at it."
Mr. Wolfowitz said the military was looking at ways to speed up the
training of the Iraqi police, civil defense and army forces;
accelerate emergency sources of electricity; and devise a plan to pay
Arab families to move out of the homes of Kurdish families who had
been forcibly relocated under Mr. Hussein's rule.
Senators peppered Mr. Wolfowitz with questions about the American
soldiers killed in guerrilla attacks.
"People are deeply concerned about the loss of troops, particularly
this last week," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas.
Gen. John M. Keane, the Army's acting chief of staff, who also
testified at the hearing, explained:
"We are fighting an opponent who is living in among the people. And it
disarms our technology rather dramatically to be able to see and
understand who they are, where they are and what they are doing."
For that reason, Mr. Wolfowitz said, the United States needs more
intelligence on where hostile fighters are hiding.
"We don't need more American troops," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
"What we need most of all are Iraqis fighting with us."
Senator Biden, however, expressed skepticism that Iraqi security
forces could operate independently soon.
"The well-intended Iraqis who are signed up to come back, they almost
looked like the Katzenjammer Kids as they tried to parade for us,"
said Mr. Biden, who visited Iraq in June.
"They're well-meaning, they're trying hard, but, boy, do they need a
lot of work."
Mr. Wolfowitz said the administration would welcome a new United
Nations resolution to attract peacekeepers from countries like
Pakistan and India, but only if it did not restrict the authority of
L. Paul Bremer III, the senior American civil administrator in Iraq.
"I'd be very enthusiastic about the right kind of resolution," Mr.
Wolfowitz said, "and very concerned about the wrong kind."
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I'm not sure where all this will lead, but it's refreshing to see
these Bush ghouls get there asses reamed.
Harry
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