Update on Iraq Spending

It is being reported that the Bush administration is preparing to request $70bn in additional funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush will ask Congress for another $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional sources said on Thursday.

The sources said that money, which would come on top of about $330 billion for the wars so far, would be for this fiscal year. The White House likely will seek another $50 billion in emergency money in the fiscal 2007 defense spending bill for the wars, the sources said.

Just as a reminder, let’s think back to what the White House said during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq:

The administration’s top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials… Mr. Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush’s former chief economic adviser, were too high.

Of course, one could make plenty of other fun juxtapositions with this large and growing bill for Iraq, including more juxtapositions between reality and what the Bush administration expected before the war.

My favorite juxtaposition today, however, is simply putting this post next to my earlier post about spending cuts.

Kash