Mitch Daniels missed Iraq War costs by $5.94 Trillion

Mitch Daniels is what passes for a policy wonk in the Republican party.

Dave Weigel brings us this blast from the past,

The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials.

In a telephone interview today, the official, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget... would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.

The actual cost of $6 trillion was 100 times larger than GOP wunderkind Daniels estimated. 

You might think that in a party that talks often about accountability a political price would be paid for a blunder of such historically staggering proportions.  You'd be wrong.