Cord Byrd: “The cost of the war in Iraq and the mission in Afghanistan is over $1 billion per week. General Franks has said that it…”

“The cost of the war in Iraq and the mission in Afghanistan is over $1 billion per week. General Franks has said that it is likely we will need to retain significant numbers of troops in Iraq for years to come. We know that now. We should not hide the ball from the American people until next year. If we want to talk about then, we were running huge surpluses back in those days. Yet the cost was small, talking about $2 billion, $3 billion, when surpluses were running $69 billion, $125 billion, $236 billion, $127 billion. Now we are talking in a deficit situation. We are running huge deficits, astronomical deficits, never to be heard of before deficits. The costs we are talking about hiding here and waiting until the supplemental comes before Congress are many, many times higher than they were during the Clinton administration. So it is a little like trying to equate apples and oranges.”