Quote:Wed Feb 1, 2006
By Steve Holland
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush vowed on Wednesday the United States will rise to Israel's defense if needed against Iran and denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for "menacing talk" against Israel.
In a Reuters interview aboard Air Force One en route to Nashville, Bush also said he saw a "very good chance" that the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency will refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
"I am concerned about a person that, one, tries to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, and two, has made it clear that his intentions are to destroy Israel," Bush said.
"Israel is a solid ally of the United States, we will rise to Israel's defense if need be. So this kind of menacing talk is disturbing. It's not only disturbing to the United States, it's disturbing for other countries in the world as well," he added.
Asked if he meant the United States would rise to Israel's defense militarily, Bush said: "You bet, we'll defend Israel."
Ahmadinejad has prompted international condemnation for anti-Israel rhetoric in recent weeks, including saying it should be wiped off the map, and also calling into question the Holocaust.
Iran is engaged in a stand-off over its nuclear program. Tehran insists its program is aimed at developing nuclear power and the United States and other international powers charge it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Asked if he thought the IAEA will refer Iran to the Security Council, Bush said: "The IAEA must take a look at the facts, and listen carefully to the arguments, and there's a very good chance it will."
The council's five permanent members, including a reluctant Russia and China, this week agreed to ask the U.N. nuclear watchdog to report Iran to New York immediately.
Bush also said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about Iran and would not say how Putin feels about a Security Council referral. "He understands the threat, and we share the same goal," he said.
The IAEA's governing board will decide at an emergency meeting in Vienna on Thursday whether to report Iran to the Security Council.
reuters
On a different note :
Banking on a quick military victory, little resistance and the use of Iraq’s oil revenues to finance the occupation, in January 2003, Mitchell Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, told the New York Times that the cost of a war would be in the $50-60 billion range. As the war and occupation dragged on, that number went up dramatically. In addition to $251 billion in congressional appropriations through March 2006, the Congressional Budget Office now says the war will also cost an additional $230 billion over the next 10 years--for a total price tag of around $500 billion. But in a shocking paper published in January, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes say that a “moderate” estimate of the direct costs of the war in Iraq will likely be much higher--totaling as much as $1.2 trillion, assuming that the U.S. begins to withdraw troops this year and continues to every year until 2010. “Like the iceberg that hit the Titanic, the full costs of the war are still largely hidden below the surface,” they explained recently in the Los Angeles Times.
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