Escalating Costs of Empire

That $87 billion Bush has requested for Iraq in his speech on Sunday night is a low-balled figure. Administration officials now say, according to the LA Times, that this request still leaves "a reconstruction funding gap of as much as $55 billion."

Such escalating costs threaten to blow a hole in the Bush administration's much-touted plan to reduce taxes. So much for a relatively painless 90-day occupation or an "empire on the cheap."