Sorting Through Campaign Claims on Iraq

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 22, 2004 -- Facts are often casualties in politics and war — and the politics of war — as seen in the debate over Iraq.

During a Cincinnati campaign stop earlier this month, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said of the war: "I call this course a catastrophic choice that has cost us $200 billion because we went it alone."

Has the United States spent that much?

"We have not spent $200 billion on Iraq. We have spent probably somewhere around $120 [billion] or $130 billion," said Norman Ornstein, a political scientist with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank.

"He adds money that hasn't been spent yet and hasn't been asked for yet," said Brooks Jackson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org.

Asked by Jackson to provide backup for the $200 billion claim for a FactCheck.org item last week, the Kerry campaign originally included a bill that would have spent money on Afghanistan and on defense programs in the United States. But since that time the campaign has provided new figures that exclude such programs, though the campaign still relies on future dollars not allocated or even requested to reach its figure.

Kerry also attacks the Bush administration over what he says is the insufficient number of fully trained Iraqi security forces.

On a recent appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, the Massachusetts senator offered this claim: "Secretary [of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld said not so long ago that there were 210,000 Iraqi security forces that were ready to go. Well, before Congress, he revised that figure just a few days ago saying, 'No, I was wrong. There are 95,000.' In fact, there are only 5,000."

According to the Pentagon, there are 6,316 soldiers in the Iraqi army, but they are just one part of the Iraqi security forces, which total around 95,000 and include 34,553 police, 36,397 National Guardsmen, 15,688 Border Patrol agents, 282 Coastal Defense personnel, 143 Air Force members and others.