WASHINGTON, 15 September 2003 — Top US officials took to the airwaves yesterday to defend Washington’s beleaguered Iraq policy and the rapidly rising price tag for the US-led war on terror.

“What’s the cost if we do nothing,” Vice President Dick Cheney asked on NBC television. “What’s the cost if we don’t succeed with respect to our current operation in Iraq. I think that’s far higher than getting the job done right here.”

“We are prepared and need to be prepared to do whatever it takes to make it work,” Cheney said, asked about the $87 billion supplementary budget request submitted to the US Congress for the fiscal year starting in October.

He called the potential cash injection “all that we think we’ll need for the foreseeable future, for this year.”

“But this is not a situation of only us writing a check to solve the problem.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll published yesterday found that six out of 10 Americans are unhappy with Bush’s request for the additional $87 billion to fund postwar reconstruction Iraq and Afghanistan.

The New York Times, in a stinging editorial yesterday, argued “after a summer of worsening news from Iraq, it is time to rethink America’s postwar strategy... One wild card is that while the administration officials like to refer to the ‘post-Saddam era,’ Saddam Hussein apparently is still alive and still a political threat.”

Cheney said “people shouldn’t be surprised that the request is coming now” and asked “what’s the cost if we don’t act?

“Iraq sits on 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, very significant reserves second only to Saudi Arabia. “The fact is there are significant resources here to work with,” he said.

“The notion that we’re going to bear the burden all by ourselves I don’t think is valid.”

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that a new UN resolution may not bring any additional international troops into Iraq.

“My guess is the most we can hope to get, by the way of additional international troops is something between zero and 10 — 15,000,” Rumsfeld told CBS television.

“The international forces would still be a smaller fraction than ours,” he said.

“The Iraqi number is the one that’s going up,” he said, referring to 56,000 Iraqis trained by US-led forces to take a role in security forces.

Asked about the need for reinforcements in Iraq, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers told ABC television said, “it’s not a question of reinforcements.”

“If you talk to any of the military commanders there ... they don’t want more American troops.“And the security picture is not just a matter of troops, it’s also the political governance piece, it’s also the economic piece. They all have to work together to provide security and a way forward for Iraqis,” he said.

Washington has sought a new Security Council resolution to create a UN-mandated multinational force under US command and share out the financial burden of rebuilding Iraq. Emergency UN talks this weekend in Geneva among the five veto-wielding Council members failed to resolve fundamental issues over Iraq’s future — including a timetable for Iraqi self-rule or a future UN role.

“We are looking for a UN resolution that would give a broader political mandate to the international effort to help the Iraqi people,” Powell told US television.

“We certainly want to put an Iraqi face on the operation as soon as we can.”

Asked about what the United States hopes to achieve in a new UN Security Council resolution on Iraq, Powell said it “might encourage people to be forthcoming at the donors’ conference for Iraq that will be held in Madrid next month.”