TheFeniX

Origial monetary estimate to "Liberate" Iraq: $200-300 Billion (and others were saying as low as $80 Billion)
New Estimate: $1.27 Trillion

Talk about underbidding.

How long was Iraq supposed to take? A year at the most?

4 times over budget and years past our original "success (whatever the goal just happened to be)" timeline, and we're winning? If you say so.

We're fostering terrorist activities, have yet to build a single hospital as promised, and the even the president is making comparisons to Vietnam....and we're winning?

Did someone redefine "Success" while I was in the bathroom?

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leejo

Just to be clear the President is comparing recent activities in Iraq to the Tet offensive in Vietnam, in which "the enemy" received a tactical drubbing that was interpreted as victory by the US press.

I was discussing this with another member. IMO the insurgents aren't attempting to achieve tactical victory by defeating the US military or the Iraqi forces so much as they are targeting US policy by going straight for the US politicians' source of power: the US voter. If they achieve this strategic victory, they don't have to hold a single block for a single day. The Tet offensive would have taught them this lesson.

This is why I'm in the silly wagon, I suppose.

Just out of curiousity, where did you get those cost and timeline estimates? I remember the administration being very reluctant to provide estimates along these lines.

TheFeniX

Leejo, they aren't starting grass-roots campaigns: they're actually still able to kill both Coalition soldiers and Civilians. They are still a threat, and whereas they may never be able to "beat" us, the past year alone and Vietnam has shown us that we can't beat them. More and more soldiers are going to die and the administration took this long to even tentatively decide what our actual goal is. We're no further in 2006 then we were 2 years ago, no matter what Bush is telling us.

They weren't THAT secretive about it. I remember specifically hearing a time-frame estimate from Bush years back before we got neck-deep in this quagmire. That was the original quote I was digging for, but could never find.

Here is where I pulled the figures. I wasn't too sure about this source, so I dug around some more. So, even if these figures are off a bit, the war is still getting more and more costly as we go on. And it's expected to cost an additional $370 Billion next year. I don't know if that's on top of what it was in 2006, or just going up to $370 Billion. So if we drag on for another 2 years until Bush is out on his butt (and hopefully the Republican party as a whole), then we're getting damn close to over a trillion dollars.


PS: I can't believe I'm rooting for the Democrats, but that's what happens when reality collides with idealism.

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