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At a White House press gaggle today, Bush administration spokesperson Dana Perino was asked to explain the lack of full funding for the Iraq War in George W. Bush’s submitted budget:

Q How does the President plan to pay for this war? There was apparently nothing in the budget that shows how we’re going to pay.

DANA PERINO: Well, there is a… there’s a $70 billion component to it. And we also have supplementals that are in front of Congress. So we’re waiting for those processes to work themselves through the system.

Q That will cover the cost of the war?

PERINO: Well, I think what you’re referring to is that we — the accusation against us…

Q — $2 billion –

PERINO: — and here I am, getting the question for you…

Q — $2 billion a week. How is it going to be paid for?

PERINO: There’s no doubt that the war is an expensive — that war is very expensive. The President has set out in his 2009 proposal for $70 billion for the Pentagon to be able to continue operations.

It’s become acceptable for the Bush administration to traffic in absurdity. $70 billion won’t cover the cost of the war in Iraq in 2009. The reporter knows it, which is why the reporter is asking the question. Bush spokesperson Dana Perino knows it, which is why she won’t answer the question, “How does the President plan to pay for this war?” The question hasn’t been answered since the war began in 2003. The question won’t be answered, because it has no good answer, only the bad answer that the monetary cost war will be paid for over a large number of decades by future generations of overburdened taxpayers. The cost of the war in lives is being borne by the poorest Americans who disproportionately go off to war, along with the Iraqis who displayed the tasteless gall to have lived in Mesopotamia in the first place.

Perino couldn’t say that, so she moved on the best she could, with most-often-used tactic of redirection in politics since “Look at the Bird!” went out of fashion: she called out another name.

Wendell!