Am I beating a dead horse here?Iraq Cost Could Mount to $100 Billion (washingtonpost.com): "At the same time, the federal budget deficit is exploding. This week, officials expect to announce that it will exceed $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the largest in U.S. history by a wide margin. Former White House budget director Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. said last month the deficit should be smaller next year, but economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. -- factoring rising war costs -- said Friday the deficit may climb even higher than their previous $475 billion estimate."

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Republicans contended that President Clinton had stretched the military too thin with the deployment of 10,000 troops in the Balkans, Kosiak noted. Now, there are 16 times that many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan alone

Two antiwar activists, Elias Vlanton of Takoma Park, and Niko Matsakis of Boston, are keeping a running tally of the war costs on their www.costofwar.comWeb site. Among the site's assertions: the $67 billion spent this year on the war and Iraqi reconstruction could have put 9.5 million more children in Head Start, financed the hiring of 1.3 million schoolteachers, or covered the health insurance costs of 29 million children

Even Republican aides on Capitol Hill complain that the Defense Department has been far too reluctant to own up to the budgetary costs of the war.