You keep beating that dead horse but you never mention your boys wars in Afghanistan and Libya.
Why is that ?
Because they (W and BO) never promised that they would be cost neutral. However Cheney did make that promise about Iraq. As far as Libya? I'm more pissed about that than Iraq. Gaddafi was on our side. Why did we care what he did to his own? And if we were going to get our panties in a twist over repressive regimes, why not Syria, they are actually a huge threat and have been for decades. I could get behind air strikes on Damascus. But Tripoli? WTF? Anyway, here are the facts calling BS on Wolfowitz's and the White House's assertions that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction.
FQ13
PRE-WAR OIL REVENUE ESTIMATES
CLAIM: �The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years�We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.� � Paul Wolfowitz, [Congressional Testimony, 3/27/03]
CLAIM: �Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.� � White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer, 2/18/03
FACT: International Oil Daily reported on 9/23/03 that Paul Bremer said that current and future oil revenues will be insufficient for rebuilding Iraq � despite the Administration's pre-war promises.
FACT: The WSJ reported on 9/5/03 that the Administration's oil estimates were �predicated on aggressively optimistic assumptions.�
FACT: While Bremer told Oil Daily that �Iraqi oil infrastructure was much worse than we thought,� a March 2000 report by the U.N. clearly said Iraq oil would be insufficient. The report said the Iraqi oil industry was �lamentable� and that the decline was �accelerating.� Roger Dowan of PFC Energy told NPR on 9/11/03 that the U.N. study the �made very clear that actually the facilities and the capacity to produce oil in Iraq� were far less than the Administration was portraying.
FACT: The NY Times reported on 10/5/03 �The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry.�