“Paulestinians love putting words in other people’s mouths”
Seriously, I don’t remember anyone ever saying the war would pay for itself in oil.
I think this canard can be traced to John Kampfner, a UK radical left journalist who covers the Middle East and specializes in pro-Palestinian propaganda as editor of The New Statesman.
Kampfner wrote a series of articles about the Bush White House and the run up to the liberation of Iraq, in which he claimed that his unnamed sources informed him that Paul Wolfowitz expressed the opinion that Iraqi oil production might in some way help to offset the costs of the war.
Even if Kampfner was a reliable source, one presidential adviser throwing out a random suggestion in a private meeting hardly equates to predicting that "the war would pay for itself via oil."
The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. Now, there are a lot of claims on that money, but… We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon
--Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Hearing of the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, March 27, 2003
in 2003, OMB Chairman Mitch Daniels estimated that the war would cost $50-$60 billion.
They were off just a bit. The August report by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the war in Iraq will end up costing over $1 trillion.