"...Wolfowitz said Garner hadn't been replaced. He had been subsumed: the Pentagon had planned all along to put someone like Bremer in charge..."

Karen DeYoung (Washington Post):
"...The appointment of L. Paul Bremer III early this month as the new head of the U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq, portrayed by the Bush administration as part of a smoothly running postwar plan, was a hastily arrived-at decision by a White House increasingly worried about collapsing civil order in Iraq, according to senior administration officials. The decision to dispatch Bremer to Baghdad two months before retired Gen. Jay M. Garner was supposed to be replaced in the post came after senior White House advisers and President Bush agreed that both the image and reality of the reconstruction effort were flagging, officials said...
Postwar plans drawn up in January and February included the eventual installation of a senior civilian "of stature" to be in charge of non-military aspects of the occupation during an indefinite period between Garner's early efforts and the election of an Iraqi government. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had interviewed and signed off on Bremer in April, but announcements of his appointment and departure were still seen as weeks, if not months, away. Powell was "surprised" by the decision to advance Bremer's departure for Iraq, one official said, "but it was a nice surprise" since Bremer is a former Foreign Service officer..."

Joshua Hammer and Colin Soloway (Newsweek):
"...Last week the White House announced that Jay Garner, the retired general and chief administrator of Iraq, was out of a job, barely three weeks after his arrival in Baghdad. Several top aides are also leaving, including Barbara Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen who had been in charge of reconstruction for the Baghdad region. Garner’s replacement is L. Paul Bremer, a counterterrorism expert at the State Department. At his first press conference in Baghdad, Bremer praised Garner and insisted that the handover reflected a longstanding plan to turn governance of Iraq to a “civilian administration.” But sources in both Iraq and Washington say that Garner’s brief tenure was a debacle—plagued by inexperience, bureaucratic infighting and inertia—and that the White House had grown alarmed at his failure to establish order and restore basic services in Baghdad. “It was amateur hour,” says a senior ORHA official..."

"...said over the weekend that she had conferred with Mr. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney about setting up the new entity [Iraq Stabilization Group]..."

"...Rumsfeld said the division's 3rd Brigade has already reached Kuwait and will be heading home this month. The 2nd Brigade, which had been in the region for 10 months, will be home in August and the 1st Brigade will return in September..."

"...Life is returning to normal for the Iraqi people -- hospitals and universities have opened, and in many places, water and other utility services are reaching pre-war levels..."

"...For a city that's not supposed to have power [Baghdad], there's lights all over the place. It's like Chicago..."

I suppose Rumsfeld would remind us that this kind of stuff used to happen all the time in Chicago back during Prohibition. Where's Elliot Ness when you really need him?..."

"...told a hearing that the “burn rate” for American money to fund the military presence in Iraq was now $3.9 billion a month—almost $1 billion a week..."

"...I didn’t see a one-point estimate there that you could say that this is the administration’s estimate. We didn’t know. And if you ask Secretary Rumsfeld, for example—I can remember from his briefings, he said repeatedly he didn’t know. And when you and I talked about it, I couldn’t put a dollar figure on it..."

Compassiongate: Either Daniels was lying being compassionate or Cheney was.

"...dismissed Lindsey's prediction [of Iraq war costs being $100B - $200B] as "very, very high"...."

"...There's just no reason that this [rebuilding Iraq] can't be an affordable endeavor...."

Daniels for Bush

"...The United States is committed to helping Iraq recover from the conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid..."

Fleischer for Bush

"...quipped [that] the price of removing Saddam Hussein could be as low as "[t]he cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves."..."

Rumsfeld for Bush

"..."I notice today everyone was saying, 'Oh my goodness, they did know what the war was going to cost.' And I have said repeatedly we don't know what the war is going to cost, and the truth is, we don't know what the war is going to cost. You can't know it, it's not knowable."..."

Rumsfeld for Bush

"...I don’t know that there is much reconstruction to do..."

David Gilson (Mother Jones):
"...As US troops approached Baghdad in late March, Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon: "I notice today everyone was saying, 'Oh my goodness, they did know what the war was going to cost.' And I have said repeatedly we don't know what the war is going to cost, and the truth is, we don't know what the war is going to cost. You can't know it, it's not knowable." Two days later, he went before Congress to ask for $62 billion in supplemental spending to fund the war...
In July, Paul Bremer, the head US administrator in Iraq, said that the cost of reconstruction is "probably well above $50 billion, $60 billion, maybe $100 billion. It's a lot of money."..."

Rep. Jim McDermott:
"...After passage of the latest $87 billion supplemental, the war in Iraq will have already cost the federal government more than $150 billion. 

*     In April, after the war started, Congress approved an initial $79 billion for military operations.  Of the $87 billion being requested now, $66 billion is for military operations- more than $50 billion of which is for Iraq.  So the military operations in Iraq alone have cost at least $130 billion.  This does not factor in reconstruction costs in Iraq, or continuing military and reconstruction costs in Afghanistan. 

*     Of the $87 billion request, $21 billion is directed to reconstruction efforts in Iraq.  However this is just the first installment on the reconstruction bill there.  It is estimated that the $21 billion is still at least $55 billion short of what the reconstruction will really cost.  Some Pentagon officials have confessed to reporters that the $21 billion is barely enough to make it through this fiscal year. 

*     So, we have already spent more than $150 billion on Iraq, and can realistically expect to pay AT LEAST another $50 billion plus….bringing the total to more than $200 billion.  Interestingly, that is the same number that former Bush Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsey leaked before his abrupt departure...

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: 
“Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.” [Source: Media Stakeout, 1/19/03]..."

"...war with Iraq could cost between $50 billion and $60 billion...The New York Times reported Tuesday. Mitchell Daniels, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the Bush administration had budgeted for both short-term and long-term military campaigns against Iraq..."

Also see: The entry above

(9/14/2003)

"...But this is not a situation where, you know, it’s only a matter of us writing a check to solve the problem. Iraq sits on top of 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, very significant reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia..."

Wolfowitz for Bush

"...we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon..."

Rumsfeld for Bush

"...I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense… funds can come from those various sources I mentioned -- frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it..."

The New Republic:
"...Actually, the fact is Iraq will require billions in investment just to return to prewar production levels of 2.5 million barrels per day and even then will bring in only a fraction of the money the United States has budgeted for rebuilding..."

Jonathan Weisman and Juliet Eilperin (Washington Post):
"...President Bush's $20.3 billion request for Iraq's reconstruction...details include...$900 million to import petroleum products such as kerosene and diesel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves..."We're not talking sanity here," Dyer [Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee] said. "The world's second-largest oil country is importing oil, and a country full of concrete is importing concrete."..."

CNN - before the war 3/12/03:
"...The report from the Council on Foreign Relations...comprised of experts from the government, the military and academia...says the president "should announce a multibillion dollar, multiyear post-conflict reconstruction program and seek formal congressional endorsement."...
Task force co-chairmen Thomas Pickering -- who served in the Clinton administration-- and James Schlesinger -- who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations -- said at a news conference that Americans should not assume Iraq's oil wealth will be available in the early years to help pay for Iraq's reconstruction.
"In the early years, oil revenues will be insufficient," Schlesinger said, noting that Iraq's oil infrastructure is in dire need of refurbishing and that the country's oil revenues are committed to supplying food and essentials..."

As much as we hate to feature this so-called journalist, here goes.
Jeff Gerth (New York Times):
"...The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials. The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said. 
Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Moreover, Vice President Dick Cheney said in April, on the day Baghdad fell, that Iraq's oil production could hit 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year, even though the task force had determined that Iraq was generating less than 2.4 million barrels a day before the war....
One expert consulted by the government, Amy Myers Jaffe, who heads the energy program at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, said her group concluded in a report last December that "oil revenues would not be enough and that the expenses of reconstruction would be huge."
In addition, United Nations reports dating back to the late 1990's documented the deterioration that occurred in Iraq's oil system as a result of trade embargoes, which curtailed Iraq's access to technology and equipment...
...Energy Infrastructure Planning Group, whose existence has not been previously disclosed. It drew on the expertise of government specialists including the Central Intelligence Agency and retired senior energy executives. It planned how to secure the oil industry during the war and, afterward, restoring it to its prewar capacity...
The task force concluded that although Iraq's stated production capacity was just over 3 million barrels per day, the system was only producing 2.1 million to 2.4 million barrels, panel members said.
"I think most people would agree that the 2.4 was a little high and the average for 2002 was 2.1," said a Pentagon official on the task force who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The "condition of the Iraqi oil infrastructure was not particularly good," the official said. "That would be evident to anybody who realized the country had been under U.N. sanctions for many years."..."

Jeff Gerth (New York Times):
"...As the Bush administration spends hundreds of millions of dollars to repair the pipes and pumps above ground that carry Iraq's oil, it has not addressed serious problems with Iraq's underground oil reservoirs, which American and Iraqi experts say could severely limit the amount of oil those fields produce.
In northern Iraq, the large but aging Kirkuk field suffers from too much water seeping into its oil deposits, the experts say, and similar problems are evident in the sprawling oil fields in southern Iraq.
Experts familiar with the Iraqi oil industry have said years of poor management damaged the fields, and some warn that the current drive to rapidly return the fields to prewar capacity risks reducing their productivity in the long run. 
"We are losing a lot of oil," said Issam al-Chalabi, Iraq's former oil minister. He said it "is the consensus of all the petroleum engineers" involved in the Iraqi industry that maximizing oil production may be detrimental to the reservoirs. 
A 2000 United Nations report on the Kirkuk field said "the possibility of irreversible damage to the reservoir of this supergiant field is now imminent."...
Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, the Houston oil services and engineering company managing the Iraqi oil-repair job, said Iraq's present production levels and the administration's future oil goals "cannot be sustained without reservoir maintenance."..."

Also see: Christopher Dickey (Newsweek)

"...[said that once Hussein was ousted] "a good part of the world, especially our allies, will come around to our way of thinking."..."

Wolfowitz for Bush
(Feb 2003)

"...I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction..."

Keith Richburg and Glenn Kessler (Washington Post):
"...International donors Friday promised at least $9 billion in future loans and as much as $4 billion in grants to help with Iraq's postwar reconstruction over the next five years, following a two-day conference marked by continuing differences over the war and how money would be spent.  
With the Bush administration pledging $20 billion, the total from the meeting came to about $33 billion -- well short of the $56 billion that the World Bank and the United Nations have said Iraq would need over the next five years.
The bulk of the money was promised in the form of loans, not the grants that U.S. officials said they preferred, at a time when Iraq is already burdened with $125 billion in foreign debt. [CG emphasis]
While 73 countries attended the session, more than three-quarters of the non-U.S. pledges came from just three sources -- Japan, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The numbers suggest that the United States could end up carrying most of the international burden for rebuilding Iraq..."

"...Tourism is going to be something important in that country,'' he said, ``as soon as the security situation is resolved..."

"...We are not in Iraq to engage in nation building...We are there to help Iraqis build their own country..."

Rumsfeld for Bush

"...I don't believe it's our job to reconstruct that country after 30 years of centralized, Stalinist-like economic controls in that country..."

"...the funds the president requested [$87B] are vital to our success in the global war on terror and to our ability to finish the job in Iraq..."

Bush

"...requested the money in September, saying, "We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq..."

Bush

"...[the key to] rebuilding a democratic and prosperous Iraq is the Iraqi people themselves..."

Misleader.org:
"...As Congress is preparing to vote on the administration's emergency $87 billion request, a new study is challenging the immediate need for the funding.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld asserted two weeks ago that "the funds the president requested are vital to our success in the global war on terror and to our ability to finish the job in Iraq."¹ But that position is being undermined by a Congressional Research Service (CRS) study that has found that Iraq military operations have sufficient funds until May of next year.
The CRS study released yesterday suggests that the recently-passed $368.2 billion 2004 Defense funding bill plus the emergency funding Congress passed at the start of the war provides the Army alone with $37 billion in funding for personnel and operations and maintenance, enough to fund operations through early May.²
President Bush requested the money in September, saying, "We have conducted a thorough assessment of our military and reconstruction needs in Iraq."³ But even prior to the CRS survey's conclusions, Republican aides said that the administration inflated its budget request in part to avoid having to ask for additional funds the following year -- during the election season.⁴
Bush continues to lobby members personally for passage of the request as it was submitted. Pressure from Congress to scale back or convert portions of the request from a grant to a loan have been met with anger. "I'm not here to debate you," Bush said, in cutting off a Republican senator during a recent meeting to discuss the issue.⁵...
Even though seven million Iraqis are unemployed¹, U.S. sub-contractors are rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure with cheap migrant labor from South Asia.² The use of Asian laborers is at odds with President Bush's emphasis on the importance of Iraqis taking on the job themselves.
Bush has said the key to "rebuilding a democratic and prosperous Iraq is the Iraqi people themselves."³ Paul Bremer, the Bush appointee overseeing post-war Iraq, likewise has talked of the need to turn around the country's 60 percent unemployment rate and "to fix a very sick economy."⁴
However, the head of the Iraqi Jobless Association, Kasem Hadi, is critical of the Bush Administration's lack of progress. "Following four rounds of talks with [Bremer's] representatives, we made no progress regarding the unemployment crisis,"⁵ Hadi says.
Meanwhile, U.S. Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, one of Bremer's colleagues, has raised questions about the reliability of foreign workers. "You find [them] in out-of-the-way corners taking 15 minute naps," she notes.⁶
At the same time, officials of the Iraqi Governing Council are concerned that large American contractors, including Halliburton and Bechtel, may be inflating the cost of the reconstruction projects. The Iraqi governors told members of the U.S. Congress that Iraqi companies could be doing the work at 10 percent of the cost.⁷..."

Rep. Waxman letter to OMB (via Misleader.org):
"...The information I have been receiving is anecdotal. But it is reliable, comes from a variety of different sources, and all points to the same conclusion. 
* Members of the Iraqi Governing Council told my staff that the costs to the American taxpayer of many reconstruct