EEUU

El 78% del plan de gasto de posguerra de Bush es militar

Autor: Richard W. Stevenson

Fecha: 9/9/2003

Traductor: Celeste Murillo, especial para P.I.

Fuente: New York Times

President Bush's $87 billion request for postwar costs is heavily weighted to maintaining military operations, with $65.5 billion directed to the armed forces, $15 billion toward rebuilding Iraq and $5 billion toward building its security forces, and $800 million to new spending for civilian programs in Afghanistan, administration officials said today.
The $87 billion price tag makes the package the most expensive postwar military and civilian effort since the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Combined with the earlier $79 billion approved by Congress to conduct the war and pay initial postwar expenses, it would bring the cost to the United States of deposing Saddam Hussein and stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next to $166 billion. That is more than 25 times the $6.4 billion bill to American taxpayers, in today's dollars, for the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
Most of the cost of the 1991 conflict — $60 billion at the time or about $84 billion in today's dollars — was picked up by allies, including Saudi Arabia and Japan.
This time around, administration officials said, their main financial goal is to squeeze donations from other countries toward the difference between the $15 billion the United States plans to put toward physical reconstruction of Iraq and the total cost, which the White House put at $50 billion to $75 billion.
White House officials said Mr. Bush's request, higher than the $60 billion to $70 billion that Congress had expected, should cover all costs for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. But some analysts said the figure might still prove to be low, especially if the United States cannot quell the growing terrorist threat within Iraq.
"This is the beginning of the administration presenting realistically eye-popping numbers to the American people," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The number is probably on the low side of what's needed, but we're finally in the realm of realism."
In his speech on Sunday night, Mr. Bush himself compared his plans to rebuild Iraq with the effort after World War II, saying, "America today accepts the challenge of helping Iraq in the same spirit."
His request, though, amounted to an abandonment of a more optimistic plan sketched by administration officials earlier in the year. The administration told Congress in the spring that Iraq's oil revenues would be sufficient to pay the bulk of the postwar costs, which they estimated then would be low.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a House subcommittee in March that Iraq could generate $50 billion to $100 billion of oil revenue over the next two to three years. "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," Mr. Wolfowitz said at the time.
Last spring, when it sought the initial $79 billion for the war, the White House asked for $2.5 billion for reconstruction.
"It is fair to say that the level of decay and underinvestment in the Iraqi infrastructure was worse than almost anyone on the outside anticipated," a senior administration official said today.
Administration officials said they now expect Iraqi oil revenues to increase from zero this year to $12.1 billion next year and $20 billion a year in 2005 and 2006.
The administration's proposal includes $51 billion for military operations in Iraq and $11 billion for military operations in Afghanistan. The military money for Iraq would include $800 million to help cover the costs incurred by other nations that agree to send troops to a multinational division, as well as $300 million to buy more body armor and armored vehicles for American troops, who have been subject to regular bombing and sniper attacks.
In addition to seeking $15 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, the proposal calls for $5 billion to be put toward building up Iraqi security forces, including an Iraqi Army, a police force and a border and customs agency.
In many ways, the $87 billion figure was the most compelling evidence yet of how Mr. Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against taking on such jobs, has reversed course to take on a more ambitious role in remaking parts of the world than any president since Harry S. Truman.
From 1948 until 1952, the United States spent just under $13 billion on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, an amount equivalent to about $100 billion today. The parallels to the spending request for Iraq are not exact, because the United States was also spending considerable amounts after World War II to maintain a large military presence in Europe and square off against the Soviet Union in the cold war.
But the White House's overall estimate of $50 billion to $75 billion in civilian reconstruction costs for Iraq, much of which the United States expects to come from other countries, makes clear that the job in Iraq is one of huge scale. At that level, it would be on a par in today's dollars with the reconstruction costs shouldered by the United States for Britain, France and Germany under the Marshall Plan.
To put the request into a different kind of perspective, the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group, said $87 billion is roughly equivalent to two years of unemployment benefits, 87 times what the federal government spends on after-school programs and more than 10 times the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.