Iraq Cost Could Mount to $100 Billion, Impact on Other Programs Feared

The cost of the war and occupation of Iraq could reach $100 billion through next year, substantially higher than anticipated at the war's outset, according to defense and congressional aides. This is raising worries that other military needs will go unmet while the government is swamped in red ink.

The cost of the war so far, about $50 billion, already represents a 14 percent increase to military spending planned for this year. Even before the United States invaded Iraq in March, President Bush had proposed defense budgets through 2008 that would rise to $460 billion a year, up 74 percent from the $265 billion spent on defense in 1996, when the current buildup began.

At the same time, the federal budget deficit is exploding. This week, officials expect to announce that it will exceed $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the largest in U.S. history by a wide margin. Former White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. said last month the deficit should be smaller next year, but economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- factoring rising war costs -- said Friday the deficit may climb even higher than their previous $475 billion estimate.

"It's already unclear whether [the Bush defense buildup] is sustainable," said Steven M. Kosiak, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Add another $50 billion, and it's doubly unclear."

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Republicans contended that President Clinton had stretched the military too thin with the deployment of 10,000 troops in the Balkans, Kosiak noted. Now, there are 16 times that many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, and the grumbling is beginning again. Sens. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) practically pleaded with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for a larger Army when he appeared last week before the Armed Services Committee.

"I know your close communications with the [Army] Reserve component will convince you, as it's convinced me and many of the members of this panel, that there's got to be relief," Inhofe told Rumsfeld.

Right now, the Army's 3rd and 4th Infantry divisions, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, 1st Armored Division and 173rd Airborne Brigade are all serving in Iraq, as are elements of the Army's V Corps, according to the Army. Nineteen of the Army's 33 brigades are deployed abroad. Only one division, the 1st Cavalry, is being held in reserve.

Two antiwar activists, Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, and Niko Matsakis of Boston, are keeping a running tally of the war costs on their www.costofwar.com Web site. Among the site's assertions: the $67 billion spent this year on the war and Iraqi reconstruction could have put 9.5 million more children in Head Start, financed the hiring of 1.3 million schoolteachers, or covered the health insurance costs of 29 million children.