WASHINGTON -- After months of ducking the question of how much the war would cost, President George W. Bush sent Congress a request for just under $80 billion in new funds. It responded by moving quickly, with both the Senate and House Committees approving bills to give the president his money, but it declined to give him the blank check that he sought.
One must remember that this bill is just the start of the payment of the war effort. It is a down payment on the military costs.
I keep track of the cost of the war by adding up the cost of the cruise missiles. The briefings regularly give a total of the types of bombs dropped and always give a total of cruise missiles fired to date. A friend once told me that they cost $6 million each. So when it was recently reported that the Coalition Forces had fired 1,100 cruise missiles since the war began, I quickly computed that we had dropped a neat $6.6 billion in cruise missiles in the first 10 days. It's just my own way to keep track.