-Caveat Lector- http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/12/international/middleeast/12COST.html
POSTWAR PLANS Panel Faults Bush on War Costs and Risks By PATRICK E. TYLER he cost of postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence against former members of Saddam Hussein's government, a panel of national security experts say in a new study. The panel, consisting of senior American officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. It concludes that President Bush has failed "to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs" of Iraq. The panel was led by James R. Schlesinger, secretary of defense in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and Thomas R. Pickering, ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Bush's father. Others on the panel included Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1993 to 1997 and is now retired, and Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, who served in senior positions in the Reagan administration. They urged Mr. Bush "to make clear to Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq that the United States will stay the course" in Iraq by financing a "multibillion-dollar" reconstruction program and seeking formal Congressional endorsement of it. In Washington, meanwhile, Pentagon officials said yesterday that the Bush administration was planning to put Iraqi soldiers to work and to pay the salaries of more than two million Iraqi civil servants to enable them to rebuild their country if Saddam Hussein is ousted. But the officials declined to estimate how much such support would cost. Through the Council on Foreign Relations report, the panel of experts and the council sounded an alarm that the Bush administration needed to be more forthcoming about the risks and costs of an extended occupation of Iraq. One risk arises from the aspirations for independence by ethnic Kurds in the north, which could set off a conflict with Turkey. Another stems from the deep grievances of the Shiite population against the Sunni minority that has dominated the country since its founding. How political leaders are chosen and how Iraq's oil resources are managed also carry the seeds of conflict that will demand significant American resources. Mr. Schlesinger, who also served President Nixon in the Office of Management and Budget, and later ran the C.I.A., said in an interview that while he was reasonably confidant that United States military forces would prevail in a brief war against the degraded army of Saddam Hussein, he was deeply worried about the unwillingness of the Bush administration to speak plainly about the much larger postwar costs and tasks. "It is not clear to me that the American people understand we are engaged in the long haul if we are to be successful," he said. The report calls particular attention to the lack of planning and inadequate resources devoted to the humanitarian front after the war. Though Mr. Bush has created a new Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, overall planning by international agencies like the World Food Program shows that only $30 million of a $120 million initial requirement for Iraq has been financed. The panel suggested that the White House request an immediate $3 billion for Iraq reconstruction tasks and food aid for the initial postwar phase. To the extent the United States fails to move quickly to address the security and food needs of the more than 16 million Iraqis now dependent on the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Washington will quickly be blamed. "It would fuel the perception that the result of the U.S. intervention is an increase of humanitarian suffering," the report says. In appended comments, James F. Dobbins, who served as a special envoy to Afghanistan in the current Bush administration, said that "even the lowest suggested requirement of 75,000 troops" to stabilize Iraq would mean "that every infantryman in the U.S. Army spend 6 months in Iraq out of every 18 to 24." The report gave credence to a recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, that 200,000 troops would be needed to police Iraq after a war. If that many troops are needed, the report says, the $20 billion a year estimate of costs "would be much greater." At the Pentagon yesterday, two senior Defense Department officials, speaking to reporters on condition that they not be identified, said the new office charged with establishing a postwar administration hoped to be able to turn over control to an interim Iraqi government within months. But they did not say how they planned to root out the thousands of intelligence and security service agents that Mr. Hussein is known to have placed within virtually every government ministry. The officials said Iraq's frozen assets might be tapped to pay for the Iraqi government salaries, or some of Iraq's oil revenues might be used to finance the interim government. That had not yet been decided, they said. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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