View 272 August 25

The first news this morning is that two more troopers are dead in Iraq. The meat grinder continues.

What should we do? I didn't want to go there, but not having gone there is not an option. We are there, and the prestige of the United States is committed: to cut and run now might leave us a lot worse off than if we had never gone.

Understand that the blood costs are not all that high. A Marine in Iraq is about as safe (if a lot less comfortable) than he would be driving on the freeways around Camp Pendleton, and a black infantryman is safer in Baghdad than a youth his age would be in Compton. A trooper a day is 365 young men (the casualties are mostly men) a year. More than that die in traffic on a typical non-holiday weekend.

There are other and higher costs. Keeping the troops over there hurts recruitment. Extending their tours is a breach of faith; it may be necessary but it has to be seen as necessary.

The benefits could be very high. The existence of a reasonably stable, reasonably friendly client state in that region would have obvious advantages.

There are also consequences more difficult to foresee. It costs Saudi Arabia less than $5/bbl to produce oil. It is sold for more because the supplies are controlled. The existence of a oil-rich state that could produce oil at $5/bbl and sell it at $10/bbl would have an enormous effect on the world economy. The effect on ours would be highly beneficial. The effect on the former USSR would be disastrous at least in the short run.

The long term effect on the US would probably be to harm domestic oil production and research into alternative energy (including oil from unconventional sources) but perhaps not. Perhaps we will have the foresight to continue those R&D efforts.

The President says we must stay the course. It is early days, and we are learning.

I have said before, if we intend to rebuild Iraq it must be from the bottom up: establish working local self-governments, establish rule of law, establish real estate law -- whose house is this? I said it all earlier and I see no reason to change that.

If we cannot establish local stability and rule of law, we will never establish a working national government in Iraq.

Incidentally, that is probably true of Afghanistan, although there both the stakes and the issues are different.

I suspect we'll be talking about what to do in both these places for some time to come.

The new, official and of course optimistic estimate is that Iraq will reach its prewar level of oil exports in October 2004. So the sort of production increase you expected is not going to happen any time soon, certainly not soon enough to affect the next Presidential election. . Increasing production over prewar levels would take yet more tens of billions of dollars, none of which will come from private sources unless things are quiet - and of course they will not be.

Bremer: Iraq Effort to Cost Tens of Billions

By Peter Slevin and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 27, 2003; Page A01

Iraq will need "several tens of billions" of dollars from abroad in the next year to rebuild its rickety infrastructure and revive its moribund economy, and American taxpayers and foreign governments will be asked to contribute substantial sums, U.S. occupation coordinator L. Paul Bremer said yesterday.

Bremer said Iraqi revenue will not nearly cover the bill for economic needs "almost impossible to exaggerate." Just to meet current electrical demand will cost $2 billion, Bremer said, while a national system to deliver clean water would cost an estimated $16 billion over four years.

The figures, which must be added to the $4 billion the Pentagon spends each month on military operations in Iraq, offer the latest evidence that the price of the Iraqi occupation is growing substantially. A State Department official said the Bush administration is preparing to seek a "huge" supplemental spending bill from Congress. Administration sources also said the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority is running so low on funds that the White House is considering seeking an emergency infusion next month to cover the organization's bills.