Congress Wants Cost of War

The Washington Post is reporting that lawmakers are asking the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office for an estimate of the cost of war in Iraq. The Bush administration had floated numbers between $40 billion and $200 billion, but in his testimony to the Armed Services Committee last week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld refused to commit to any specific numbers. Lawmakers are getting frustrated with the lack of specific estimates, and WaPo cites unnamed Congressional staff and military experts as being skeptical of any estimates when there are so few specifics to work with. Reconstruction of Iraq, on the other hand, has been estimated at $16 billion a year, and could be completely funded with the sale of seized Iraqi oil.