dtb said:

>According to a number of top U.S. officials in the run-up to the
>war, yes. Remember estimates that our total dollar cost would
>be in the single digits of billions, with US troops almost totally
>gone by the fall of 2003, and a functinion Iraqi government with
>market economy, robust oil exports, and well on the way to
>infrastructure reconstruction within a couple of years?

Modern wars usually cost in the ball park of a hundred billion dollars (they do wars cheaper in Africa but that's a another story). No one in their right mind would expect a totalitarian state loaded with religious fanatics to pacify in less than 5 years. I do not doubt the comments referred to by dtb were made for public consumption. However I do not recall reading such comments but then I would have ignored them as obvious lies. The cost of a hundred billion dollars is cheap **IF** we can keep the War on Terrorism located in the Middle East (NOT on our turf) and avoid having one of ours cities blown away by a terrorist action. The Middle East should have been pacified 50 years ago when it became clear the world's economy would become dependent upon Middle Eastern petroleum (European imperialism in the Middle East should have morphed into building local secular democracies). We (the United States) are now paying the price for decades of neglect.

Gary