By the way, the excessive spending on SCHIP Bush has promised to veto is $7 billion a year.

WASHINGTON - "Defense Secretary Robert Gates will ask Congress on Wednesday to approve nearly $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008, increasing initial projections by more than a third."

Cheney: In weeks rather than months
Mar. 16, 2003 Dick Cheney
"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly, . . . [in] weeks rather than months." --on NBC's Meet the Press

Rumsfeld: I Doubt Six Months
Feb. 7, 2003Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
"It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months." —to U.S. troops in Aviano, Italy: (more)

Rumsfeld: Under $50 billion
Jan. 10, 2003Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
“Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.”

Rumsfeld: Five days or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last longer
Nov. 15, 2002Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
"The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990," he said on an Infinity Radio call-in program. "Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." (more)

Does anyone think the Congress voted to authorize an open-ended situation costing over $200 billion a year? Or did people believe the folks who were trusted and shouldn't have been?

Arf