SHOW: NEWS FROM CNN 12:00 PM EST December 13, 2004
Military Spending to Increase Dramatically
BYLINE: Wolf Blitzer, Suzanne Malveaux, Karl Penhaul, Rusty Dornin, Jill Dougherty, William Schneider
GUESTS: John Pike, Robin Wright, John Harwood
BLITZER: Welcome back to the NEWS FROM CNN. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.
Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could send military costs through the roof next year. And in the larger war on terror, a super expensive top secret spy program is giving Senate critics sticker shock.
Here to talk about that and more, our guest. John Pike is the director of GlobalSecurity.org.
John, thanks very much for joining us.
JOHN PIKE, DIRECTOR, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: Glad to be here.
BLITZER: Based on what you know, how much has the war in Iraq cost U.S. taxpayers so far? It's almost two years. In March, it will be two years since it started.
PIKE: We're looking at going on $200 billion thus far. It's really kind of hard to say, because they keep raising the estimates on it.
They ran out of the 2004 budget a month early, had to borrow into the 2005. They're already starting to suggest that the 2005 budget is going to be $100 billion for one year alone.
BLITZER: So that's going to be in addition -- that's going to be for Iraq and Afghanistan? PIKE: Right.
BLITZER: For the deployment of almost 20,000 troops in Afghanistan, as well. But most of that money goes for Iraq.
PIKE: It's basically Iraq, because you've got 150,000 now troops in Iraq itself, and then you have another 40,000 troops who are in Kuwait, supporting the Iraq deployment. So it's about 90 percent Iraq, 10 percent Afghanistan.
BLITZER: Because there was talk that in the new budget it could be $70 billion. Then there were other suggestions it could go as high as $100 billion. The new budget will be released, what, in February?
PIKE: No. We're not going to see the entire budget when it's released in February, because they're funding this incrementally in, basically, blocks of $25 billion.
We've already had $25 billion appropriated for 2005. They're probably going to come back in February, ask for another chunk then and then probably the last chunk sometime in the summer.
The administration, I think, has been reluctant to acknowledge how much this thing is going to cost. I think they've also been properly cautious about not estimating in advance how much it's going to cost, because they themselves really don't know how much is going to be required.
BLITZER: So we're talking, basically, more or less, what, $2 billion a week to maintain the operation in Iraq?
PIKE: It's been running over a billion a week thus far. I think we're probably getting up to $2 billion a week fairly soon.
Our Iraqi security forces within the last several months have basically collapsed on us. We've had a significant uptick in operational tempo. As we've seen last week, there are additional requirements for armoring a lot of our vehicles. And it's clear that the operational tempo of this thing is going to continue to increase before -- before we turn the corner.
BLITZER: So when you say the Iraqi security forces has collapsed, I thought they were doing better?
PIKE: Well, they were doing better for awhile. But if you take a look, say, at what has happened with the Iraqi police service, back in the summer we estimated that we need about 90,000 cops on the beat. We had about 85,000 who were in the training cycle.
Then they increased the estimate of how many were needed to 130,000. Today we only have 45,000 who are actually reporting for duty.
So there was a 50 percent increase in the number required. A 50 percent decrease of the number who were actually on hand. And it's American troops who are having to make up the gap. BLITZER: If you -- you remember this almost two years ago, I think, in February 2003, when Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, testified before the Congress on the cost of the war.
He suggested it might be a neutral cost, that the Iraqi export of oil could wind up paying for this -- paying for this war. Am I -- am I correct in remembering that?
PIKE: Right. I mean, they were basically saying at that time that they did not think it was going to have the sort of significant cost that we saw at the first Gulf War.
I think it's very clear that they were very optimistic about how the occupation was going to go. And I think now everybody acknowledges that.
BLITZER: I think they recognize that they didn't envision the insurgency developing as it has.
PIKE: No. And frankly, I mean, there were a lot of other really bad things that people were talking about at that time that didn't happen. There was an expectation that there -- possibly, there would be a vast humanitarian crisis with millions of refugees.
So it's turned out worse than some people thought, better than other people thought.
BLITZER: Let's talk about this super secret spy satellite that's supposedly up there -- it's not up there yet, but they're working on it.
We've heard complaints from Jay Rockefeller, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dick Durbin. Durbin, another member of the intelligence committee, Ron Wyden, that -- they're not allowed to get into details, because it's a classified -- it's a classified issue.
PIKE: Right.
BLITZER: But what can you tell our viewers on what this is, because it's, what, approaching $9 billion for a system that may or may not work?
PIKE: Well, it's -- actually it's not that secret. We've been aware of the program ever since the first Gulf War back in 1991, because that was when the first of these satellites was launched.
Ted Mozin (ph) and the network of worldwide observers who track these satellites understood fairly early on that there was some sort of stealth spy satellite flying around up there.
I think that the question is whether this is something that we still need. And this is what the -- Senator Wyden and Senator Rockefeller were asking.
A new generation of satellites, $9 billion that we haven't spent yet. When you think about what a stealth satellite would to, maybe it's a requirement that we don't have anymore. Maybe that $9 billion could be better spent on something else in the intelligence community. Maybe that's money that we're going to be needing to spend in Iraq.
BLITZER: Maybe on armor for vehicles or for body armor, which is a lot less -- which is a lot less than $9 billion.
PIKE: Yes. It's a very long list. It's a very long list. And it's a very specialized capability. This stealth satellite would give us an ability to look at people when they don't know that we're there.
It might make it harder for an adversary to shoot at. It would be one way to keep a Lockheed Martin, a company that's making spy satellites for a long very time, way to keep them in the spy satellite business so that we're not stuck just buying from Boeing.
But I think that they've looked at these requirements. The Senate side, at least, ultimately concluded that on balance the money can be spent better somewhere else.
BLITZER: The -- and one final question on this whole issue.
PIKE: Sure.
BLITZER: I understand that the Senate Intelligence Committee is reluctant to go forward, but the appropriations committees and the House Intelligence Committee said go forward with the project.
PIKE: Well, I think that there are -- again, there are a lot of issues involved here. And one of them is simply an industrial based issue. That our main spy satellite contractor right now is Boeing. They're -- have not been very good at managing their part of the spy satellites. That we've had a tremendous cost overrun from them.
I think that there is a concern that we would like to maintain competition in this area, keep Lockheed Martin in the business and try to keep Boeing honest.
BLITZER: John Pike is from GlobalSecurity.org, know a great deal about all things military. Thanks very much.
PIKE: Thank you.
BLITZER: We'll turn our attention toward Iran right after the break. Is the Islamic government in Tehran trying to influence the vote in Iraq? My guest, Robin Wright of the "Washington Post." She was just there.
Much more coming up from THE NEWS FROM CNN.
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