The hits just keep on comin'

[Kelly the Dog]

The Bush Administration, if re-elected, is expected to ask for 70 billion more for the war early next year, ringing the total to 225 billion and counting. Here are a few choice excerpts...

 

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.

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 money to finance construction and operations at the sprawling embassy complex in Baghdad. The Central Intelligence Agency's request would come on top of those.

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. An additional $18.6 billion of that money 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.

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 about $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.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Oct25.html

[Alaska Darin]

The Bush Administration, if re-elected, is expected to ask for 70 billion more for the war early next year, ringing the total to 225 billion and counting. Here are a few choice excerpts...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Oct25.html

85959[/snapback]

Looks like a drop in the bucket compared to all the new spending John Kerry is proposing. His health care "plan" alone is likely to cost at least three times that $70 Billion number ANNUALLY.

 

Both of these candidates suck.