This estimate has, unfortunately, proven to be overly optimistic. |
This war is turning out to cost far more than anticipated and not simply because we had to stay in Iraq with far more troops and far longer than the Bush administration expected. Compared to past wars and earlier projections of war costs made by the Congressional Budget Office and others, this war is turning out to be very expensive. |
Unfortunately, while substantial progress has been made in some sectors, in many areas Iraq remains far short of achieving the relatively modest goals set out for reconstruction in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. invasion in 2003. |
Waiting till the end of the day means you don't have time to get people to react outside of the briefing, although so much of this has leaked. So I guess it does give them some advantage. |
We're long past the point where you can just look at the DoD budget. Now we're dipping so much into war-related funding. |