Way back in May, the Bush administration sought a $25-billion emergency fund for the war in Iraq. At the time, it was called an “insurance policy” that probably would not be needed.
Guess what. It’s needed.
A relentless insurgency in Iraq has prompted the Pentagon to begin spending money from a $25-billion emergency fund that Bush administration officials had once said would not be needed this fiscal year, officials said Tuesday.
Unable to tap into regular 2005 funding until the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, the Pentagon has already spent more than $2 billion from the emergency fund.
President Bush requested the emergency funds from Congress in May to pay for a war that is longer and more violent than he and his Pentagon strategists had predicted.
[…]
“It shows the pace of operations is far greater than anticipated,” said Stanley E. Collender, a former House and Senate budget analyst and now general manager of Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington. “The cost is much greater than expected. All of the early estimates were based on the idea that we’d get in and out quickly, and that hasn’t happened.”
But don’t worry, the president is “optimistic”; we’re “staying the course”; freedom is “on the march”; and as Donald Rumsfeld explained, eventually, “the Iraqis will get tired of getting killed.”
As Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, said of over the weekend, this is “the incompetence of the administration.”