White House won't include Iraq, Afghanistan in budget

WASHINGTON -- Pressed to estimate the cost of future operations in Iraq, the Pentagon has repeatedly said it's just too hard to do.

Now the ranks of disbelievers are growing -- in Congress and among private defense analysts. Some say the Bush administration's refusal to estimate costs could erode American support for the Iraq campaign, as well as the credibility of the White House and lawmakers.

"It is crucial that we have every bit of information so we can level with the taxpayer," Democratic Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin fumed recently at Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"The White House plays hide and seek with the costs of the war," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.

The object of their ire is President Bush's proposed defense spending for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 -- a $402 billion request that didn't include money for the major military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's not just Democrats who disagree with the administration's approach.

Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees penciled in tens of billions of dollars for the two military campaigns in spending plans they began pushing through Congress this week.

Asked at a recent congressional hearing why costs for Iraq were not included in the Bush administration's budget, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim replied: "Because we simply cannot predict them."

Yet many contend the administration at least knows that roughly 100,000 soldiers will remain in Iraq for another year, and could have budgeted an estimate or a placeholder request for that.

Private and congressional analysts, in fact, have done a number of studies and projections of possible costs:

Daniel Goure of the conservative Lexington Institute said he expects troop levels to gradually drop over five years to one-half or one-third the present deployment -- meaning 30,000 to 50,000 Americans troops could remain in Iraq through 2009.

The Congressional Budget Office a few months ago estimated the cost to occupy Iraq through 2013 at up to $200 billion, depending on troops levels.

Casualties could rise to at least 1,000, said a recent report by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a frequent Pentagon adviser. "One thousand or more dead in Iraq is hardly Vietnam," Cordesman said. "But it must be justified and explained, and explained honestly."

The Council on Foreign Relations, citing polls that show American support for the mission slipping, urged leaders of both parties this week to publicly commit to a multibillion dollar program over at least the next several years, outlining "the magnitude of resources that will be necessary, even if they cannot identify all of the specific requirements."

White House budget chief Joshua Bolten acknowledged in a briefing with reporters last month that the military will need money over and above the defense request -- up to $50 billion the administration will seek in a so-called emergency supplemental budget for Iraq and Afghanistan. It used a similar supplemental last fall to ask for $87 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq

But administration officials don't plan to ask for that supplemental, or specify what it might include, until sometime after Jan. 1, 2005 -- about two months after November's presidential election.

Had Bush included it in the budget proposal sent to Congress in February, the government's surging deficit problem would have looked even worse.

Zakheim denied last month that the administration was waiting until January so Iraqi expenses wouldn't figure into Bush's re-election bid.

That hasn't convinced everyone.

"The American people are entitled to know before the election, not after the election, at least the estimated costs ... in dollars ... lives ... length of the occupation," said Byrd.

Most of the Capitol Hill arguments have centered on whether war spending should be requested in the regular budget being discussed now or in the supplemental to come later. But Byrd, among others, notes that the government has not made public estimates of non-monetary costs, either.

The Pentagon's refusal to estimate costs is the same stance it took before the war.

For months leading up to the invasion, officials said they couldn't estimate because they didn't know how long it would take to fight the war.

Within days after it started, however, the Pentagon sent Congress a request for $63 billion.

"So you know they had it in their back pockets," all along, said Cindy Williams, a former congressional budget officer now with the MIT security studies program. "They were just not wanting to disclose to the American people on the eve of the war how much it was going to cost."

Rumsfeld said at a recent hearing that he can't now estimate Iraq and Afghanistan needs for the budget year starting in October because there are so many uncertainties.

Those include how violent Iraq will be then, the number of troops that will be required, whether allies might contribute forces and whether a new Iraqi government will let the U.S. military stay.