http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6331812/
Increase in war funding sought
Bush to seek another $70 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan
U.S. soldier in Afganistan
Ahmad Masood / Reuters file
A U.S. soldier patrols a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, as a woman
looks on with her child. President Bush is expected to submit to
Congress a request for an additional $70 billion to fund U.S. military
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in coming months.
By Jonathan Weisman and Thomas E. Ricks
Updated: 5:40 a.m. ET Oct. 26, 2004
The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency
funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing
total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early
last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.
White House budget office spokesman Chad Kolton emphasized that final
decisions on the supplemental spending request will not be made until
shortly before the request is sent to Congress. That may not happen
until early February, when President Bush submits his budget for
fiscal 2006, assuming he wins reelection.
But Pentagon and House Appropriations Committee aides said the Defense
Department and military services are scrambling to get their final
requests to the White House Office of Management and Budget by
mid-November, shortly after the election. The new numbers underscore
that the war is going to be far more costly and intense, and last
longer, than the administration first suggested.
The Army is expected to request at least an additional $30 billion for
combat activity in Iraq, with $6 billion more needed to begin
refurbishing equipment that has been worn down or destroyed by
unexpectedly intense combat, another Appropriations Committee aide
said. The deferral of needed repairs over the past year has added to
maintenance costs, which can no longer be delayed, a senior Pentagon
official said.
The Army is expected to ask for as much as $10 billion more for its
conversion to a swifter expeditionary force. The Marines will come in
with a separate request, as will the Defense Logistics Agency and
other components of the Department of Defense. The State Department
will need considerably more funds to finance construction and
operations at the sprawling embassy complex in Baghdad. The Central
Intelligence Agency's request would come on top of those.
"I don't have a number, and [administration officials] have not been
forthcoming, but we expect it will be pretty large," said James Dyer,
Republican chief of staff of the Appropriations Committee.
Request expected
Bush has said for months that he would make an additional request for
the war next year, but the new estimates are the first glimpse of its
magnitude. A $70 billion request would be considerably larger than
lawmakers had anticipated earlier this year. After the president
unexpectedly submitted an $87 billion request for the Iraq and
Afghanistan efforts last year, many Republicans angrily expressed
sticker shock and implored the administration not to surprise them again.
This request would come on top of $25 billion in war spending
allocated by Congress for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The two
bills combined suggest the cost of combat is escalating from the $65
billion spent by the military in 2004 and the $62.4 billion allocated
in 2003, as U.S. troops face insurgencies that have proven far more
lethal than expected at this point.
"We're still evaluating what our commitments will be, and we will
submit a request that fully supports those commitments," Kolton said.
The senior Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
said final figures may be shaped by the outcome of the presidential
election and events in Iraq. But assuming force levels will remain
constant in Iraq at about 130,000 troops, the final bill will be
"roughly" $70 billion for the military alone, he said.
In making cost estimates for the supplemental budget request, Pentagon
officials have distanced themselves from the Bush administration's
public optimism about trends in Iraq. Instead, they make the fairly
pessimistic assumption that about as many troops will be needed there
next year as are currently on the ground.
The latest request comes on top of three earlier emergency spending
bills approved by Congress in support of the war. In August, Congress
approved $25 billion for the war as a bridge to the larger request the
president promised for early 2005. Last October, lawmakers passed an
$87.5 billion emergency spending measure that included $65 billion for
combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another $18.6 billion of
those funds went to Iraqi reconstruction.
Congress approved the first war spending measure in April 2003, a
$78.5 billion measure that included $62.4 billion for combat and $7.5
billion for foreign assistance.
Intense insurgency
The White House has been careful to keep the war spending numbers
"close to the vest," Dyer said. But Pentagon officials have been
working on the request for two to three months, even as they put
together their far larger budget request for fiscal 2006, the Pentagon
official said.
The Iraq war has proven so costly because of the unexpectedly intense
opposition from insurgents. That has led the Pentagon to keep far more
troops in Iraq than it planned.
At the end of the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, Pentagon
officials expected to be able to radically trim the occupation force
by the end of that year to perhaps 50,000 troops or less. Instead,
they maintained a force of about 130,000 personnel there and have
supplemented that force with about 20,000 civilian contractors.
On top of paying the wages of the all-volunteer force and the
contractors, the military has paid for building dozens of bases and
keeping a high-tech force equipped with computers, communications gear
and expensive modern weaponry.
Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus estimated that in
inflation-adjusted terms, World War I cost just under $200 billion for
the United States. The Vietnam War cost roughly $500 billion from 1964
to 1972, Nordhaus said. The cost of the Iraq war could reach nearly
half that number by next fall, 2 1/2 years after it began.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to comment. "We are going to let OMB
talk for the administration on this issue," Marine Lt. Col. Rose-Ann
Lynch said.
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.intellnet.org
Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence
Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to
advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their
activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and
other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this
copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must
obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
