Honest analysts of the costs of nation building - which is to say, analysts who are not constricted by the Bush administration's spin machine - say that the price tag for America's occupation of Iraq, and the fool's mission of attempting to remake the country as a Middle Eastern Texas, will be at least $600 billion.

At a time when President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy have caused budget deficits that are approaching $500 billion, the prospect of spending an even greater amount to force people to conform to George W. Bush's idea of proper political and economic behavior is a daunting one. And it is not something the American people should accept without serious data and debates.

But the Bush White House continues to stall the flow of information and stifle any debate. Just as the administration refuses to honestly discuss how many American soldiers are likely to die in a country where they were supposed to be greeted with cheers and open arms, so the president and his aides have failed repeatedly to offer the American people or their Congress anything more than hazy details about the economic cost of Bush's Iraq misadventure:

The Pentagon claims that U.S. operations in Iraq are costing only about $3.9 billion a month, but those figures are extremely deceptive. They do not, for instance, include the costs of replacing damaged vehicles and equipment. Nor do they include the costs of replacing munitions expended in combat. Considering the fact that Iraq remains an active war zone - despite the president's "mission accomplished" claim of early May - the best bet is that the price tag for the military is a lot closer to $5 billion a month. That adds up to $60 billion a year. And, considering the cozy relationship Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon has developed with corporate contractors, the final accounting will probably prove to be dramatically more expensive for American taxpayers.

Iraq is a ruined country, and not just as a result of the latest round of attacks. Iraq has yet to repair damage from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, from the Persian Gulf War of 1991, or from the 12 years of harsh sanctions and low-scale bombing that followed it. Even the ridiculously optimistic American viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer, says that rebuilding the country will cost "a lot of money." But, typically for the administration's sycophantic representatives, Bremer has avoided costing out what "a lot of money" means. On CNBC's Capital Report recently, he said the cost for the basic rebuilding project could be $50 billion. Or $60 billion. Or $100 billion.

The U.S. "reconstruction" of Iraq is being run in a manner that guarantees it will cost American taxpayers the highest possible amount. By refusing to turn over control of the occupation and redevelopment of Iraq to the United Nations, the U.S.-led occupation force is excluding countries that are far more experienced when it comes to distributing aid and redeveloping basic infrastructure. Moves to limit the roles of France and Canada are particularly troubling, as both countries have long track records of working well in the most dangerous and difficult zones of the world.

All of these factors point to the need for Congress to step into the picture. The Bush administration needs to be called to account. When the House and Senate return from their August break, members of the Bush administration must be forced to address the enormous cost, and the enormous inefficiency, of their decision to have the United States occupy a country that has not invited or welcomed our presence. We hope the so-called "fiscal conservatives" of the president's own party, including Wisconsin Republicans such as Reps. James Sensenbrenner, Paul Ryan, Mark Green and Tom Petri, will abandon petty partisanship and begin to ask: "Why, if the United States is the 'liberator' of Iraq, is America still sacrificing her soldiers and her economic security there?"

Copyright 2003 The Capital Times

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