Lawmakers Grill Wolfowitz on Iraq

ESTHER SCHRADER / Los Angeles Times 30jul03

Senate Foreign Relations panel shows impatience with 'shifting justifications' for war and lack of cost estimates for rebuilding.

Washington -- Senate Republicans and Democrats lambasted Bush administration officials Tuesday for refusing to provide cost estimates for rebuilding Iraq, and for ignoring other threats while insisting that Saddam Hussein's regime played a central role in fomenting worldwide terrorism.

In aggressive, sometimes hostile, questioning of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also accused the administration of misleading Americans on its justifications for going to war in Iraq and on how long U.S. troops will be needed in the country.

"Because of a combination of bureaucratic inertia, political caution and unrealistic expectations left over from before the war, we do not appear to be confident about our course in Iraq," said committee Chairman Richard Lugar, R- Ind.

Almost three months after President Bush declared that major combat operations had ended, Lugar added, "We still lack a comprehensive plan for how to acquire sufficient resources for the operations in Iraq and how to use them to maximum effect."

Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the committee, twice got into heated exchanges with Wolfowitz over the question of how much the Iraq operation is costing.

"I think you're going to lose the American people if you don't come forward now and tell them what you know, that (the reconstruction effort is) going to cost tens of billions of American taxpayers' dollars and tens of thousands of American troops for an extended period of time," Biden said, his voice just below a shout.

Referring to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's penchant for saying certain things are "unknowable," Biden admonished Wolfowitz: "Please don't waste our time or yours by saying the future is simply unknowable. Pick a number. Pick an idea."

In more muted tones, Lugar said the administration should supply "at least some idea of what is likely to be required of the American taxpayer."

But Wolfowitz and White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten held firmly to the position that it is impossible to estimate costs because the situation in Iraq is changing so rapidly.

Bolten said "for the next couple of months" he expected costs of maintaining troops in Iraq to stay at about $4 billion per month. However, he said he would not estimate the tab after that. He predicted the administration would ask for more Iraq funds later this year.

Wolfowitz criticized the Senate for refusing to provide $200 million the Pentagon had requested earlier this year to train Iraqi security forces. He suggested this has led directly to the deaths of U.S. soldiers.

Wolfowitz said Iraqis instead of Americans could have been guarding a hospital in Baqubah, where an attacker dropped a grenade onto soldiers last Saturday, killing three soldiers.

The money, intended for training Iraqis for such security jobs, was "dropped, apparently because the Congress in its wisdom did not believe that it was necessary," Wolfowitz said.

Wolfowitz delivered lengthy opening remarks that focused on atrocities committed by Hussein's regime. He cited progress being made by U.S. troops in gaining the respect of the Iraqi people, in restoring basic services and in putting in place nascent democratic structures.

He also suggested that the number of "committed Baathists" opposing the U.S. -led forces in Iraq might approach 20,000, and he said that they might be unique in the annals of guerrilla warfare in using as their chief tactic "contract killings."

Wolfowitz cited reports that Iraqis had been offered "$200 to attack a power line, and $500 to attack an American."

But his statement appeared to backfire.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., told Wolfowitz that the evidence of state- sponsored torture under Hussein, while tragic, was just the latest in a series of "shifting justifications" by the administration for going to war against Iraq.

Chafee said that in the months leading up to the war, the administration maintained that dislodging Hussein was the only way to prevent the use and spread of weapons of mass destruction. Yet since the war, no such weapons have been found.

"It was a steady drumbeat of weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction. And . . . in your almost hourlong testimony here this morning . . . only once did you mention weapons of mass destruction, and that was an ad lib. I don't think it's in any of your written testimony," Chafee said. "And so we're seeing shifting justifications, I think, for what we're doing there."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said her constituents want to know how the administration squares spending $45 billion on Iraq in the current fiscal year with domestic spending of only $6.7 billion for Head Start, $27 billion for the National Institutes of Health and $31 billion for highways.

Boxer derided the Pentagon's description of the current fighting in Iraq as "low-intensity conflict." "I want you to know when your kid dies, it's not a low-intensity conflict," she said.

Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., attacked Wolfowitz over his statement that "the battle to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle of the global war on terror.

"This administration has grossly exaggerated the connection between the war on terrorism and the Iraq situation," Feingold said. He said that on the same day that U.S. troops moved into Baghdad in April, men suspected of being responsible for the attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000 were escaping from a prison in Yemen.

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-costs30jul30,1,5151214.story 30jul03