The cost of democracy? 540 billion dollars.

[Rokenn]

U.S. troops may be in Iraq for 10 years
Thu Jun 19, 7:09 AM ET
Tom Squitieri USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- Two top U.S. defense officials signaled Congress on Wednesday that U.S. forces might remain in Iraq (news - web sites) for as long as a decade and that permanent facilities need to be built to house them there. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave no explicit estimates for the time U.S. forces would stay in Iraq, but they did not dispute members of Congress who said the deployment could last a decade or more. The comments were among the most explicit acknowledgements yet from the Bush administration that the U.S. presence in Iraq will be long, arduous, costly and a strain on the military. -snip- Wolfowitz said the size of the supplemental funding request will be determined in the fall. But he did not dispute an estimate by Rep. John Spratt (news, bio, voting record), D-S.C., that the military would need an annual budget of $54 billion -- $1.5 billion a month for Afghanistan, $3 billion a month for Iraq.

[ 06-19-2003, 03:38 PM: Message edited by: Rokenn ]

[Ryanamur]

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Move out of Saudi. Move into Iraq...

[Sigmar]

I thought the initial plans were to leave Iraq to its own devices... so much for that

[DameonRules]

Iam currently in kuwait and i know that the us forces are getting outta here. They want to get all US troops outta here so that we don't look like conquers.

[Moiraine]

Originally posted by Sigmar: I thought the initial plans were to leave Iraq to its own devices... so much for that

They were - but they never mentioned WHEN that would happen ...