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Analysis: Soaring costs of ' rescuing' Iraq
By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst

WASHINGTON, July 31 (UPI) -- The liberation of Iraq was to have been the war that paid for itself in spades, and gave U.S. corporations the inside track on the greatest energy bonanza of the 21st century. Instead, it has become a fiscal nightmare, a monetary Vietnam that already accounts for around 15 percent of the U.S. annual budget deficit, a figure likely to only grow remorselessly into the unforeseeable future.

The unforeseen cost of the war is already attracting powerful and influential critics, most worryingly to U.S. President George W. Bush, from within the GOP itself....