Bush Administration $2,940,000,000,000 off in its calculations

Back in 2002-2003, according to key officials in the Bush administration , the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq was going to cost $60 billion.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz championed this $60 billion figure, but added that much of the cost might well be covered by Iraqi oil revenues; the country was, after all, floating on a "sea of oil." ("To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he told a congressional hearing.)

Let's take that $60 billion figure as the Bush baseline. If economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes are right in their recent calculations and this will turn out to be more than a $3 trillion war (not to speak of a $5-7 trillion one), then the Bush administration was at least $2,940,000,000,000 off in its calculations.

But what does money matter? After all, this administration has been spending as if there were no tomorrow.

[Excerpt of an article by Tom Engelhardt, Tomgram]