It's worse than the $20 billion for Halliburton, WorldCom, cement plants, and state-of-the-art garbage trucks.
Bush wants Congress to allocate $51 billion or so for maintaining the military presence in and around Iraq, with an additional $15 billion for troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This is left unchallenged in Congress, lest they be accused of not supporting the troops.
Yet the Congressional Budget Office estimates that we need far less money. Here's the estimated 12 month cost of maintaining troops in and around Iraq:
Bush: $51B, 180,000 troops
CBO: $19B, 106,000 troops
The same CBO estimate says the military can maintain current troop strength in Iraq only until March 2004. After that, we're taxing military readiness beyond the breaking point. So we'll have to reduce troop strength just five months from now, unless Bush is prepared to destroy the military.
We cannot and should not maintain current troop strength. So why aren't more Democrats highlighting the danger Bush is posing to our military preparedness? Why do we not have a fuller account of the cost of maintaining an imperial occupation?
It's unfortunate that Kucinich is the only presidential candidate with a comprehensive and realistic plan for handing authority over to the UN and saving US taxpayers $40 billion or more. Where'd everyone else go?