Saturday, September 06, 2003

The doo-doo is getting deeper On Friday the Washington Post said that "The White House has told congressional leaders to expect a budget request of $60 billion to $70 billion for occupying and rebuilding Iraq next year. White House officials said yesterday that the request is still in flux, and could be closer to $50 billion." The scary part is that no one knows how much will be needed in the long run. The Post article quotes Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, as saying ' "This isn't a flash-in-the-pan kind of problem...We're at war -- for some time." ' Also according the the Post, Lt. Gen. Robert Magnus, the Marine Corps' chief budget officer, agrees witht he long term assessment and agreed and said that "This is a generational war..."  ' How long is a generation? As somebody once said, we appear to be in deep doo-doo. 10:36:32 PM    comment []

First call for resignations As suggested, the "little regime change" in the pentagon has been requested. Democratic representative David R. Obey sent a letter to President Bush calling for the resignations of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and asking that the apentagon no longer set foreign policy for the US. Read the NY Times report by David Firestone. The pending budget request for tens of billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq is also coming under fire. New blood at the top in the Pentagon and shifting the responsibility for foreign policy to the State Department presents an opportunity at least to mend the rift with our European allies and hopefully begin to stabilize the situation in Iraq. 10:25:11 PM    comment []