Panel Faults Bush on War Costs and Risks
By PATRICK E. TYLER
he cost of postwar reconstruction of Iraq will be at least $20 billion a year and will require the long-term deployment of 75,000 to 200,000 troops to prevent widespread instability and violence against former members of Saddam Hussein's regime, a panel of national security experts say in a new study.
The panel, consisting of senior American officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations. It concludes that President Bush has failed "to fully describe to Congress and the American people the magnitude of the resources that will be required to meet the post-conflict needs" of Iraq.
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They urged Mr. Bush "to make clear to Congress, the American people and the people of Iraq that the United States will stay the course" in Iraq by financing a "multibillion-dollar" reconstruction program and seeking formal congressional endorsement of it.
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The report calls particular attention to the lack of planning and inadequate resources devoted to the humanitarian front after the war. Though Mr. Bush has created a new Pentagon Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, overall planning by international agencies like the World Food Program shows that only $30 million of a $120 million initial requirement for Iraq has been financed. The panel suggested that the White House request an immediate $3 billion for Iraq reconstruction tasks and food aid for the initial postwar phase.
To the extent the United States fails to move quickly to address the security and food needs of the more than 16 million Iraqis now dependent on the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Washington will quickly be blamed. "It would fuel the perception that the result of the U.S. intervention is an increase of humanitarian suffering," the report says.
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At the Pentagon yesterday, two senior Defense Department officials, speaking to reporters on condition they not be identified, said the new office charged with establishing a postwar administration hoped to be able to turn over control to an interim Iraqi government within months. But they did not say how they planned to root out the thousands of intelligence and security service agents that Mr. Hussein is known to have placed within virtually every government ministry.
The officials said that Iraq's frozen assets might be tapped to pay for the Iraqi government salaries, or some of Iraq's oil revenues used to finance the interim government. That had not yet been decided, they said.