Steven Kosiak Quotes (11 Quotes)

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.

It's difficult enough to really react to all the data typically included in defense budget. To not even have access to the basic top line over view before you have the opportunity to question the secretary seems problematic. It doesn't have the out years beyond 2007 usually, in fact in all previous blue tops, it had those numbers.

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.

The Army may have a tough time pushing these projected reductions through Congress.

If you want to have intelligent questions (from the press), you get better question if you give people time to prepare.

Currently we're paying for this war essentially on our credit card. We're not raising taxes, we're not cutting other programs to pay for it and that adds to the federal debt.

Interesting rhetoric ... but the really big (weapons) modernization were left untouched.

Given the critical importance to the war effort of winning the 'hearts and minds' of the Iraqi people, and the generally strong support among Iraqis for reconstruction-related assistance, such a lopsided approach seems, at best, risky.

People in the White House said Lindsey was way off. It turns out he was. But just not in the direction they thought.

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.

Even assuming, perhaps optimistically, that this gap could be covered by drawing equally upon U.S., international and Iraqi resources, this suggests that an additional 5 to 10 billion in U.S. reconstruction assistance might need to be provided.