I had pointed out to my friends at Lucianne.com, between their "victory" back-slapping frenzies, that Dubya's diplomatic failures, in the area of war preparations, had left the American People holding the bag for the entire cost of the war, reconstruction, and now, a continued guerilla war well into the future.

The Republican administration's rough 'n tough, "go it alone" approach has left them with a condition now requiring engagement of real bill-paying allies, who did not support the war, and the UN, in order to extricate themselves from a financial sink-hole that sucks on American resources well into the future. I've never seen an administration that spends so much time being wrong.

And, by the way, the WMD has not been found, and is therefore not secured. And the fighting continues with "somebody", and therefore the country is not pacified. So, even here, where is this great Republican success?

From the article:

"A Heritage Foundation study by Ariel Cohen and Gerald O'Driscoll argued, "The Bush administration should provide leadership and guidance for the future Iraqi government ... (including) a massive, orderly and transparent privatization of state-owned enterprises, especially the restructuring and privatization of the oil sector."

Commented John B. Judis in The New Republic Jan. 20, "The study has been well-received by administration neo-conservatives."

And according to reports by Jamie Dettmer in Insight magazine and Judis in The New Republic, Eliott Abrams, now senior director for Near East and North African Affairs on the National Security Council, even authored a proposal in December calling for U.S. rather than U.N. management of Iraq's oil fields after U.S. conquest (or liberation) and occupation.

Neo-conservative pundits with equal faith and fervor argued that Iraqi oil revenues would finance the country's own reconstruction after the war and that they could even be used to offset some U.S. military operating costs, surely a cheap price to pay for liberating the Iraqi people from the terrible yoke of President Saddam Hussein?

But it hasn't worked out that way.

The cost of the war itself exceed previous public projections from the office of the Secretary of Defense. At an April 16 news conference, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim acknowledged that the cost of the war to that point came to $10 billion-$12 billion. But the cost of returning troops to base would be another $5 billion-$7 billion, plus another $9 billion for the 3-1/2 weeks of combat operations, bringing the total cost at that point to between $24 billion-$28 billion."

5:01:15 AM    comment []