WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- A Defense Department official Wednesday called reports that the administration would seek $95 billion in supplemental appropriations to pay for military action and humanitarian efforts in Iraq an "overstatement," but neither the White House nor the Pentagon would confirm how much Congress would be asked to approve.
The official declined to give a more accurate figure, saying the numbers were still being crunched, and said much will depend on the length of the war, its intensity and how much help the United States gets from allies.
"Clearly we are not anticipating anything that's long and drawn out," the official said. "The shorter it's going to be, obviously the more intense is going to be," he said. "The idea is to fund what we'll need for a relatively short, intense conflict."
As the nation inches closer to armed conflict in Iraq, President George W. Bush and administration officials have been vague about how much it would cost American taxpayers to prosecute a war in the Middle East. The Pentagon is in the process of crafting its supplemental budget request that is expected to ask for the money it needs to use military force to disarm Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, but officials are tightlipped about what they plan to ask for.
"It is too soon to say with precision how much this war will cost," said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer during an afternoon briefing with reporters.
The administration is seeking $379.9 billion in its 2004 budget request for the Pentagon. Fleischer said Bush has not yet been briefed on the amount the Pentagon is planning to ask for. According to various news reports, the Office of Management and Budget has said the Pentagon's portion of the budget is likely to be around $60 billion. That would be close to what was spent in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which cost $61 billion. Of that amount, $50 billion was paid by the allies, who transferred the money to the United States.
The official said he does not expect the same generous cash outlays and instead expects to see "in kind" donations made -- countries setting up hospitals or distributing food or medicine.
The Defense Department official called speculation that the supplemental request would reach $95 billion was "an overstatement." That figure included the cost of the war, help to allies like Turkey and Jordan, and the costs of reconstruction.
Speculation about the price tag for prosecuting a war in the Middle East started months ago with former Bush senior economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey predicting war expenses could top $200 billion. Mitch Daniels, White House Budget Office chief, had put the cost somewhere near $20 billion.
The Congressional Budget Offices estimated that the cost of deploying troops to the Persian Gulf would be between $9 billion and $13 billion, and that prosecuting the war would cost between $6 billion and $9 billion a month. The cost of an occupation following combat operations would vary from about $1 billion to $4 billion a month, the CBO said.
It is also unknown how much money for rebuilding Iraq would come from oil proceeds. The U.S. war plan calls for the protection of the oil fields -- an attempt to avoid their sabotage by Iraqi forces in a literally scorched earth retreat.
"The full intention is that in the event there is a post-Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, that the oil would be operated and sold for the benefit of the Iraqi people, I suppose initially by the coalition forces or some international group of some sort, and then shortly thereafter by some legitimate Iraqi operation that would be managing that important natural resource," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week.
The senior defense official said the Pentagon hopes to submit its supplemental appropriation request to Congress by April 10, before the body goes out of session. He said the Defense Department will attempt to get broad latitude with the money, so it could move funds between accounts as it sees fit. He also said the money would all be earmarked for the Iraqi war and would not be siphoned off to pay for unrelated efforts like the global war on terror.
The Pentagon has already spent more than $2.5 billion deploying more than 150,000 troops to the region. The Afghan conflict costs roughly $1.5 billion a month.
Bush is expected Wednesday night to tell supporters at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, that defeating Hussein would mean a more stable Middle East.
Fleischer said Wednesday that the amount of the supplemental request would depend largely on what action Hussein takes and that if Bush decides to use military force, a request would be sent based on the "latest information that is available."
Along with the cost of tanks, planes, guns and personnel, the administration plans to also undertake a massive humanitarian effort similar to that in Afghanistan last year. The United States estimates that the Iraq war could create 2 million refugees, including thousands already displaced within Iraq or living as refugees abroad, a White House panel reported Monday.
It said that already some 750,000 people have already fled Iraq and approximately 800,000 have been displaced from their homes within the country.
Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council's Middle East director said suggestions that, in addition to refugees, a war against Iraq could leave half a million civilians wounded and 100,000 dead were "just speculation."
The United Nations says a war could leave close to 5 million people reliant on food aid. Eighty percent of the Iraqi population -- 16 million people -- relies completely on government food rations, a distribution system that could collapse in a week if there is a war, according to the group Stop Hunger Now. The remaining 8 million also receive government food but have other sources as well.
U.S. officials said the government was pre-positioning $12 million worth of relief supplies -- stockpiling blankets, water and medicine among other items for about 1 million people. They are moving 3 million daily rations into the region -- a ration for one person per day that is the equivalent in calories to three meals. They are also preparing for rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts to restore electricity, health facilities, and water and sanitation systems.
