Troops in Iraq for 5 YEARS with American taxpayers footing the huge cost of rebuilding??....
US senators want price tag on huge Iraq rebuilding
Reuters, 06.25.03, 5:59 PM ET
WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - The United States faces a huge task rebuilding Iraq and restoring security and the White House needs to spell out how much it will cost, two senior senators just back from the Middle East said on Wednesday.
"No one back here understands how monumental this job is going to be," Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden from Delaware said, fresh from a bipartisan fact-finding mission to Iraq, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.
U.S. bombs hammered Iraq's infrastructure during the war and looters stripped many public buildings afterward. The United States has yet to set up an interim government and police work and civil administration is largely handled by U.S. military forces.
Expected oil exports will generate revenue well short of covering Iraq's needs, including its heavy debt load and its damaged infrastructure, Biden said.
By the end of 2004, Iraq will likely generate $19 billion from oil exports, Biden said, warning the country's needs in that period would be about five times greater.
"There's a massive bill that's going to land in the laps of somebody, most likely the American people," said Biden, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
At a briefing on Capitol Hill, Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he wants to know where the money for the continued U.S. mission in Iraq would come from and how it would be disbursed.
While in Baghdad, the Senate delegation predicted U.S. forces would remain in Iraq for another five years.
The Bush administration has said it would remain in Iraq as long as necessary, but "not a day longer."
"We need to get over that rhetoric," Lugar said. "We must reorganize our military to be there a long time."
Copyright 2003, Reuters News Service
