Bush to seek $120 billion more for wars

[DJ_Skrilla]

Holy Shit! More $! FUCKIN-EH!

Money would pay for conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan into next fiscal year

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Thursday it will ask Congress for $120 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If approved by Congress, the war money would push spending related to the wars toward a staggering half-trillion dollars.

Details of the requests are not final, but the 2007 budget proposal that President Bush will submit next week will reflect the totals for planning purposes. The president also will ask Congress to devote an additional $2.3 billion this year to prepare for a bird flu epidemic.

About $70 billion of the new war money will be requested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, bringing total spending on the two campaigns to $120 billion for the current budget year. The other $50 billion in new war money will be set aside in the 2007 budget for the first few months of the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. More money will likely be needed in 2007.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $320 billion has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including $50 billion that Congress sent Bush in December.

Administration officials said the new figures were estimates.

Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the White House’s budget office, said the administration was “trying to balance the desire for transparency and accurate estimating with the unpredictable nature of war and the needs on the ground.”

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the requests reflect the president’s desire to “commit the resources that are necessary to fight and win the war on terrorism.”

The requested money would cover troop salaries and benefits, repairing and replacing equipment, supporting U.S. embassies in the two countries and taking on the insurgency. It would cover the costs of continuing to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces and protect U.S. troops.

Kaplan said the $50 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan for 2007 is a placeholder and he suggested that the combined costs of the two campaigns could be different.

“We’re still in the process of working out the details,” he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11145948/

[Echewta]

If the adminstration throws out numbers, its safe to multiply it by 3 for the realistic bottom line.

[ASsman]

Freedom has no price....

Other things like universal healthcare and body armor, do.

[kaiser soze]

I can't believe they just give it up without asking for proof that things are improving or follow the paper trail

this is fucking bollocks, the U.S. is rotting from the inside out ( as well as many other neglected nations ) and this thing wants more money for war

Impeach bush

[2sweet2Bsour]

I just . . . I don't get it. It's sickening. I try not to think too hard about the long term repercussions - financial and reputational - it's too freaking depressing. I mean, not that America's rep was exactly stellar before Bush came along, I'm just sayin.

[D_Raay]

"We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," -- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, speaking to the House Appropriations Committee on March 27, 2003, estimated the figure in the tens of billions of dollars if Iraq's oil fields were not destroyed.(which they weren't)

BOSTON (Reuters) - The cost of the
Iraq war could top $2 trillion, far above the White House's pre-war projections, when long-term costs such as lifetime health care for thousands of wounded U.S. soldiers are included, a study said on Monday.

Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes included in their study disability payments for the 16,000 wounded U.S. soldiers, about 20 percent of whom suffer serious brain or spinal injuries.

They said U.S. taxpayers will be burdened with costs that linger long after U.S. troops withdraw.

"Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large they are," said the study, referring to total war costs. "We can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars."

Before the invasion, then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor" and rejected an estimate by then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey of total Iraq war costs at $100 billion to $200 billion as "very, very high."

Unforeseen costs include recruiting to replenish a military drained by multiple tours of duty, slower long-term U.S. economic growth and health-care bills for treating long-term mental illness suffered by war veterans.

They said about 30 percent of U.S. troops had developed mental-health problems within three to four months of returning from Iraq as of July 2005, citing Army statistics.

Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, and Bilmes based their projections partly on past wars and included the economic cost of higher oil prices, a bigger U.S. budget deficit and greater global insecurity caused by the Iraq war.

They said a portion of the rise in oil prices -- about 20 percent of the $25 a barrel gain in oil prices since the war began -- could be attributed directly to the conflict and that this had already cost the United States about $25 billion.

"Americans are, in a sense, poorer by that amount," they said, describing that estimate as conservative.

The projection of a total cost of $2 trillion assumes U.S. troops stay in Iraq until 2010 but with steadily declining numbers each year. They projected the number of troops there in 2006 at about 136,000. Currently, the United States has 153,000 troops in Iraq.
-----

Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?

What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.

The neocons seek American empire, and Sharonites seek hegemony over the Middle East. The two agendas coincide precisely. And though neocons insist that it was Sept. 11 that made the case for war on Iraq and militant Islam, the origins of their war plans go back far before.

[Ali]

The War Monster is HUNGRY! Give it your taxes, your families and friends... watch it all on TV.

[vickista]

Holy Shit! More $! FUCKIN-EH!

Money would pay for conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan into next fiscal year

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Thursday it will ask Congress for $120 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If approved by Congress, the war money would push spending related to the wars toward a staggering half-trillion dollars.

Details of the requests are not final, but the 2007 budget proposal that President Bush will submit next week will reflect the totals for planning purposes. The president also will ask Congress to devote an additional $2.3 billion this year to prepare for a bird flu epidemic.

About $70 billion of the new war money will be requested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, bringing total spending on the two campaigns to $120 billion for the current budget year. The other $50 billion in new war money will be set aside in the 2007 budget for the first few months of the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. More money will likely be needed in 2007.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that $320 billion has been spent on Iraq and Afghanistan since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, including $50 billion that Congress sent Bush in December.

Administration officials said the new figures were estimates.

Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the White House’s budget office, said the administration was “trying to balance the desire for transparency and accurate estimating with the unpredictable nature of war and the needs on the ground.”

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the requests reflect the president’s desire to “commit the resources that are necessary to fight and win the war on terrorism.”

The requested money would cover troop salaries and benefits, repairing and replacing equipment, supporting U.S. embassies in the two countries and taking on the insurgency. It would cover the costs of continuing to train Iraqi and Afghan security forces and protect U.S. troops.

Kaplan said the $50 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan for 2007 is a placeholder and he suggested that the combined costs of the two campaigns could be different.

“We’re still in the process of working out the details,” he said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11145948/




they need more money because usually the us would get money from a war, because of all the weapons etc. bought by other countries. but after the madrid bombings etc., all the other countries started bailing out so the us lost the money they would have gotten had the others stayed, also bush expected the iraqi's to just let them take over so they thought that would make their job much quicker and cost effective however they fought back so good on em.

[jennyb]

So my cousin told me he read an article recently that broke it down like this... every man, woman, and child, inc. babies in america could be given 2 million dollars for what this war has cost in terms of money. Could this be true?! :confused: Every man, woman and child will hardly pay 2 million dollars in taxes in their lives. Can you say debt?!

And to think of all the hard working people unable to afford health care within America's borders... that makes me sick.

[2sweet2Bsour]

And to think of all the hard working people unable to afford health care within America's borders... that makes me sick.

No pun intended? Heh.

[jennyb]

Ha! :)

[Funkaloyd]

every man, woman, and child, inc. babies in america could be given 2 million dollars for what this war has cost in terms of money. Could this be true?! :confused:
That's a big overstatement. It'd be true if the war had cost 600 trillion dollars, but even the US national debt (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/) (which has been shooting up for half a century or so) isn't anywhere near that figure.

[ASsman]

How could you not feel patriotic about this.