Remember this guy?
Larry Lindsay was kicked out of the White House
for telling George W. that invading Iraq would cost over $100
billion!
Larry Lindsey was fired for having the balls to tell Bush and Rumsfeld the Iraq invasion would cost at least $100-200 billion. Now, the “public” tab is up over $400 billion with no end in sight.
From an article published in 2003 in the run-up to Bush’s invasion of Iraq:
The Bush administration is refusing to produce any estimate of the possible cost of war and rebuilding in Iraq, which a series of outside studies have placed at anywhere from $50 billion to more than a trillion dollars.
Budget director Mitch Daniels guessed $50 to $60 billion in a newspaper interview this fall. Former White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey put the price tag between $100 billion and $200 billion. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that defense officials were preparing an estimate of $60 billion to $95 billion.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Thursday described the possible war’s cost as “not knowable.”
“We have no idea how long the war will last. We don’t know to what extent there may or may not be weapons of mass destruction used,” he said. “We don’t have any idea whether or not there would be ethnic strife. We don’t know exactly how long it would take to find weapons of mass destruction and destroy them — those sites.”
The truth was that anyone who disagreed with Rumsfeld’s estimate of war on the cheap was booted out. Anyone in and around the Pentagon who disagreed — was told to shut up and dance.
One general who confronted Rumsfeld and Bush was Anthony Zinni. A retired Marine who played the part of Saddam’s military chief in pre-invasion war games — until he tired of beating the pants off Rumsfeld’s grand design. In his new book, “The Battle for Peace“, he reiterates the same educated understanding that still evades the supermarket warriors among neo-cons.
Recalling that the ouster of the Soviets from Afghanistan had left that country in the hands of the Taliban, Zinni said, “Anyone who has to live in this region and has to stay there and protect our interests, year in, year out, does not look at this as a start and end, as an exit strategy, as a two-year tenure. As long as you are going to have a U.S. Central Command, you are going to be out there and have to deal with whatever you put down on the ground.”
Later in the book, Zinni says that “ignoring this reality, the United States and a handful of its allies forcibly evicted the Saddam Hussein regime, with no plans for a new order to replace it. Today, U.S. military forces in Iraq are mired in an ever-worsening insurgency. Civil war is an ever-growing danger. Disorder and chaos grow ever more entrenched.”
This is not latter-day wisdom from the general. In the summer of 2002, seven months before the war began, he told an audience in Florida what would be required if the United States invaded Iraq. “You could inherit the country of Iraq, if you’re willing to do it,” he said. “If our economy is so great that you’re willing to put billions of dollars into reforming Iraq. If you want to put soldiers that are already stretched so thin all around the world and add them into a security force there forever, like we see in places like the Sinai. If you want to fight with other countries in the region to try to keep Iraq together, as Kurds and Shiites try and split off, you’re going to have to make a good case for that.”
So, who listened?
Posted: Thu - March 16, 2006 at 07:45 AM