Bush Admin seeks another $600 million to continue WMD search

[mindseye]

Does anyone else share my suspicion of where this is going? If Congress turns down the request, the Admin can say "We would have found them, but the Democrats cut off the search."

Either we spend 200% more on the search, or we hand the administration an excuse. Lose-lose.

Maybe they can use part of the $600 million to hire psychics or dowsers?

Officials Say Bush Seeks $600 Million to Hunt Iraq Arms
By JAMES RISEN and JUDITH MILLER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 — The Bush administration is seeking more than $600 million from Congress to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein's government had an illegal weapons program, officials said Wednesday.

The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said.

The budget figures for the weapons search are included in the classified part of the administration's supplemental appropriations request, and have not been made public. The size of the request suggests the White House is determined to keep searching for unconventional weapons or evidence that they were being developed under Mr. Hussein. The search so far has turned up no solid evidence that Iraq had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when the American invasion began in March, according to administration officials.

Counting the money already spent, the total price tag for the search will approach $1 billion.

The money is intended specifically to pay for the activities of the Iraq Survey Group, made up of teams of troops and experts who are managed by the Pentagon but whose activities are coordinated by David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector who reports to the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet.

Officials said the money for the Iraq Survey Group comes under the classified intelligence part of the Pentagon's budget request. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the classified category.

The request for increased funding comes just as Mr. Kay is scheduled to brief Congress in closed sessions on Thursday on an interim report of the Iraq Survey Group's findings so far.

He is to testify before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The C.I.A. is expected to publicly release a declassified statement based on Mr. Kay's testimony after the briefings, officials said.

C.I.A. and other officials said last week that Mr. Kay's report would be inconclusive, suggesting that he will not say that he has found strong evidence of the existence of illegal weapons in Iraq.

Since the fall of the Hussein government, the failure to find evidence of illegal weapons has been a major political embarrassment for the Bush administration.

After the initial military-led effort to find such weapons came under fire, President Bush turned to the C.I.A. to oversee an expanded search. In June, Mr. Tenet asked Mr. Kay to act as his personal adviser on the issue and to provide strategic advice to the weapons hunters.

Officials familiar with the request said that if the administration gets all the money it is seeking, it will provide funding for a staff of 1,400 for the Iraq Survey Group. It currently has more than 1,200 members.

The cash infusion is being sought even though the group has gotten off to what experts and military officials said had been a rocky start.

Though a larger group than the 75th Exploitation Task Force, the military weapons hunting group that preceded it, the Iraq Survey group includes many members drawn from reserve units.

Some weapons hunting units have sat in Baghdad for days, sometimes weeks, waiting for missions, officials say.

"Even when hot tips have come in, it often takes days to mobilize a unit to visit a suspect site or talk to a suspect scientist," said a former member of one unit, who spoke on condition that he not be identified.

The Iraq Survey Group has also been slow to mobilize former international arms inspectors who had volunteered to accompany the Exploitation Task Force and the Iraq Survey Group, those inspectors say.

"Most of us have just given up waiting and gone on with our lives," said one former weapons inspector, who was told he would be sent to Baghdad.

The group has also concentrated on installing an unnecessarily elaborate infrastructure to support its operations, said several military officials who complained there was a disparity between the resources allotted to the two programs.

While the Exploitation Task Force worked out of an abandoned palace and the servants' housing quarters near Baghdad airport and remained short of vehicles, air support, computers and even electricity during the initial months of the weapons hunt, the Iraq Survey Group spent its first weeks installing air-conditioned trailers, a new dining facility, state-of-the-art software and even a sprinkler system for a new lawn, according to officials and experts who worked with the group this summer.

"They kept unloading crates and crates of new Dell laptops," said one Pentagon official who complained that the exploitation force lacked resources.

[Nubclear]

[DinoDoc]

You're quibling about $600 million in an $87 billion appropiation?

[Nubclear]

Yes.

[DinoDoc]

Then I'm sure you could find better penny ante crap in it to whine about.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Let the Democrats oppose it, even though I agree it's a comparatively trivial amount. The GOP has a majority in both chambers; nothing that's happened since Jan. of this year can reasonably b blamed on the Democrats. Not that they won't try, of course.

[Proteus_MST]

600 Million.

So maybe this is the reason, why High Ranking Officials from the US-Administration urge the German Government to get financially more involved in Iraq

http://de.news.yahoo.com/031001/286/3o87z.html

(of course they want the money without making any concessions whatsoever and also not thinkin about giving any part of their political power in Iraq out of their Hands, as, so they say, they have paid with their blood for Victory in Iraq and the UN doesn´t have the Capacities to take part in the government Iraq nevertheless.)

[Harovan]

So they haven't given up yet? I think they should waste yet more money on this. May be they can save a few $$$ to search for Santa Claus, too. Nobody else should contribute a penny or a single man, though.

[CerberusIV]

Give them the money. Then, when GWB wants to be re-elected, let him explain to the voters why their money was spent in Iraq, not at home.

[Urban Ranger]

What rubbish.

Whatever happened to their solid evidence on CBN weapons?

[mindseye]

You're quibling about $600 million in an $87 billion appropiation?

Dino, please stop groping that straw man. Now, put on your bifocals and re-read:

Does anyone else share my suspicion of where this is going? If Congress turns down the request, the Admin can say "We would have found them, but the Democrats cut off the search."

First the White House said that Iraq posed an imminent threat of such magnitude that the US was forced to immediately invade without international support. Didn't matter, Rumsfeld claimed they knew just where the WMDs were.

Then, when the military didn't find any, they said Kay's report would deliver the proof. Now it hasn't, so they are downplaying the report's significance and ... asking for more money for more searching.

It's not the 600 million, Dino, it's the nested layers of deception and denial.

[Urban Ranger]

There is no guarantee that after 600m later, something will be find.

So the game can keep going on and on and on.

[DanielXY]

Yeah, maybe they need another 2billion afterwards, since the 600m werent enough to fabricate some evidence...

[mrmitchell]

"Bush Admin seeks another $600 million to continue Tooth Fairy search"

Bush Spring 2002: "I know Iraq is holding tooth fairies against their will! We must attack"
Bush Spring 2003: "We have handed Iraq the ultimatum: Set free their tooth fairies or else"
Bush attacks Iraq
Bush Fall 2003: "We need more money to find the tooth fairies. Yes they do exist! Because I put a tooth under my pillow and the next day I found a shiny quarter!"
Bush Fall 2004: "We would've found the tooth fairies but those Democrats cut off the funding."

[Verto]

We'll see.

[Q Classic]

sure, let them spend it.

the ****ers will make my generation pay for it out of our goddamn pockets anyway, while the old fogies who did this are comfortably dead.

oh, did i mention, it's my generation that's getting its heads splattered around over there, not theirs.

[Proteus_MST]

Maybe it would be cheaper in the end,
if you just let him plant american WMDs in Iraq
and then let him state they are the WMDs you are looking for

[mindseye]

I think the worst part of this all is, some day in the future American intelligence may detect some real, significant threat, and the rest of the world will just yawn and mutter about lack of credibility.

[Lincoln]

$600 million or $600 trillion, who cares? We are so far in debt now we may as well go for broke. I for one am planning to go to the garage sale...

[Q Classic]

yeah, but see, you won't be the one holding the check in the end.

[Alexander's Horse]

Might as well give Bush 600 million to find the Loch Ness monster.

If there were significant stockpiles of wmd they would have found them by now.

And it was bit dumb to push off a final report for 6-9 months - puts the final report right into a presidential election.