Honey, I Escalated The Wars
17 November 2006 9:13 am by Taylor Marsh
Our military needs money.
It needs it badly.
Over $60 billion is needed to restore and re-equip our units coming back from
Iraq to get them ready to do it all again. We also need a larger Army and Marine Corps.
What we don't need is to help Mr. Bush escalate the Iraq war.
We do, however, need to fund to the fullest possible extent our efforts in
Afghanistan. What was won is now lost in that country, with things getting worse
every month. But Afghanistan is not Iraq, which will need our involvement for
quite a while, but not at the current troops levels, which need to begin to
be brought down by mid-2006.
The numbers being requested strain credulity, without the Pentagon budget for
our military being broken down into specific tasks. Hold on to your seat, because
this is a bumpy read.
The Bush administration is preparing its largest spending request yet for
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a proposal that could make the conflict
the most expensive since World War II.The Pentagon is considering $127 billion to $160 billion in requests from
the armed services for the 2007 fiscal year, which began last month, several
lawmakers and congressional staff members said. That's on top of $70 billion
already approved for 2007.Since 2001, Congress has approved $502 billion for the war on terror, roughly
two-thirds for Iraq. The latest request, due to reach the incoming Democratic-controlled
Congress next spring, would make the war on terror more expensive than the
Vietnam War.(snip)
Growing opposition to the war contributed to Democrats' takeover of the House
and Senate in this month's elections. Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, an early
critic of the war who lost his bid Thursday to be the House Democratic leader,
vowed to use his clout as chairman of the House panel that reviews the Pentagon
budget “to get these troops out of Iraq and get back on track and quit
spending $8 billion a month.”“The war's been an extraordinarily expensive undertaking, both in lives
and in dollars,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.(snip)
Leon Panetta, President Clinton's former chief of staff and a member of a
bipartisan panel studying recommendations on Iraq for President Bush, said
the Pentagon needs $50 billion to $60 billion to “restore the units that
are being brought back here, to re-equip them and get them back to a combat-readiness
status.”
Military may ask $127B for wars?
$127B FOR WARS?
I don't think so. I know the Pentagon budget doesn't work like this, but we
need to break this behemoth down. You have can x-amount for Afghanistan, which
needs to be our priority. You can have x-amount for force re-equipment and restoration,
which is another critical component. But as for Iraq, boys and girls, we need
to talk.
Murtha has the purse strings in the House, and the spine of the Democratic
Party on Iraq. Come 2007, it's time for him to exert some authority and let
Mr. Bush know who's boss on his Iraq war budget. Again, Afghanistan, yes; re-equiping our troops, yes; continuing back up in Iraq, yes, but as former general Barry McCaffrey suggested, we need to redeploy at least 7 brigades from Iraq as soon as we can.
$127B FOR WARS, indeed.
