Rove now denies that Iraq funds would help pay for war costs, opposite of Bush administration statements at war's start

In former top Bush aide Karl Rove’s new book and in recent promotional media appearances, he has been rewriting the history of the Iraq war, predominantly concerning former President Bush’s justifications for going to war because of Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Rove persisted with his Iraq war history revision campaign. Asserting that the Bush administration had mishandled the war, host Tom Brokaw said that war costs had skyrocketed  from the beginning, and there were no oil revenues used to offset costs as had been promised. In response Rove emphatically rejected that the Bush administration said Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for the war:

ROVE: “No, no. Tom with all due respect that was not the policy of our government that we were going to go into Iraq and take their resources in order to pay for the cost of the war.”

Rove’s assertion is blatantly untrue. In the days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a congressional panel that Iraqi oil revenues would help pay for rebuilding the country, significant portions of the cost of the war. “The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We’re dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon,” he said.

One month before the war, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Iraq “is a rather wealthy country. … And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.”

Since the start of the Iraq war, the U.S. has spent tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction costs.

Watch Rove on Meet the Press: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6lJjFPNv1s