Jeff Duncan: “I believe and certainly hope that our Armed Forces will achieve a quick and decisive victory in Iraq, and certainly we…”

“I believe and certainly hope that our Armed Forces will achieve a quick and decisive victory in Iraq, and certainly we all hope that this can be done without the loss of even one American life and very few, if any, and hopefully no innocent Iraqi civilians, but every article we read, every analyst we hear says that winning the peace, the aftermath will be much more difficult than the war itself. I know that people in the White House, the State Department and the Defense Department have been working on this aftermath plan for many months now. Because of something I heard on a news broadcast last week, I want to briefly discuss this. Last Wednesday night, as I drove to a meeting here in Washington, I heard on the national news that the Baghdad stock market was booming. The report said prices had gone up more than 50 percent in the last 7 months because investors there feel that the war will be very short and that the U.S. will then spend hundreds of billions of dollars there over the next 10 years or so. Last week, the National Journal, a very nonpartisan publication, said we will spend at least $156 billion in a best-case scenario and as much as $1.9 trillion in a worst-case scenario over the next 10-years in Iraq. Already, big multinational companies like Halliburton, Bechtel and others are lining up to get part of the pie and to make sure that we spend this money in Iraq.”