War Costs Next Year Estimated at $170 Billion or More

The New York Times reports:

The military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $170 billion in the next fiscal year over and above the $515.4 billion regular Pentagon budget that President Bush has proposed, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Wednesday.

Mr. Gates gave that estimate in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee after cautioning the panel that any estimate would be dicey, given the unpredictability of war.

“Well, a straight-line projection, Mr. Chairman, of our current expenditures would probably put the full-year cost in a strictly arithmetic approach at about $170 billion,” Mr. Gates said in response to questions from Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the head of the committee.

So, Mr. Levin pressed, “That would be a total then of $685 billion” in Pentagon spending for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. “Does that sound right?”

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Gates replied. “But as I indicated, I have no confidence in that figure.”

Mr. Levin has been a persistent critic of the war in Iraq, and he has complained that the Bush administration has been less than straightforward about the financial costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns by seeking supplemental funding outside the regular Pentagon budget. Congress has gone along with the supplemental requests, with members of both parties pledging to give American troops whatever they need.

“While the monetary cost is not the most important part of the debate over Iraq or Afghanistan, it does need to be part of that debate, and the citizens of our nation have a right to know what those costs are projected to be,” Senator Levin said.

Mr. Gates said he was concerned that some countries who have pledged troops to Afghanistan were not fully meeting their commitments, and that he would bring up the subject with his counterparts from other NATO countries.

“I think we have to be realistic about the political realities that face some of the governments in Europe,” Mr. Gates said. “Many of them are coalition governments, some of them are minority governments, and they are doing what they think is at the far end of what is politically acceptable.”

The secretary added: “There are allies that are doing their part and are doing well. The Canadians, the British, the Australians, the Dutch, the Danes, are really out there on the line and fighting.”

While Mr. Gates was before the committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was making the same point during a visit to London.

Mr. Gates got a relatively friendly welcome, perhaps in part because he has tried to adopt a style less confrontational than that of his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld. Adm. Michael G. Mullen was also welcomed warmly by committee members in his first appearance before the panel as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

Senator Levin complained, as he has before, about what he sees as the failure of the post-Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. “For years, the Iraqi leaders have failed to seize the opportunity our brave troops gave them,” he said. “It is long past time that the Iraqi leaders hear a clear, simple message: we can’t save them from themselves; it’s in their hands, not ours, to create a nation by making the political compromises needed to end the conflict.”

Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Republican and one of his party’s most influential voices on military matters, did not disagree with Senator Levin on Iraq. “I think by any fair standard, that level of progress to date is falling below the expectations that we had hoped,” he said. “Senator Levin quite appropriately observed that the elected officials in Iraq are simply not exercising the full responsibility of the range of sovereignty, and that puts our forces in a certain degree of continuing peril and risk.”

Mr. Gates said in response to questions that he will soon visit Iraq again and confer with Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander, on whether and when to reduce American troop strength to the “pre-surge” level of about 130,000.

Also on Wednesday, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, agreed that the international military mission there was “under-resourced,” in particular when compared with deployments to Iraq.

“Afghanistan, land mass-wise, is half again as big as Iraq, for example, if you want to get some relative bearing there,” General McNeill said during a Pentagon news briefing.

In Afghanistan, the population is “estimated to be perhaps as much as 3 million more than Iraq, yet we have, in trying to operate in a counterinsurgency environment, only a fraction of the force that the coalition has in Iraq,” General McNeill added. “So there’s no question it’s an under-resourced force.”

General McNeill said that if the official American military counterinsurgency doctrine were applied to Afghanistan, then well over 400,000 allied and Afghan security troops would be required. He acknowledged the impossibility of fielding a force of that size.

“The trick, then, is to manage the risk that’s inherent in having an under-resourced international force and reaching the level of capacity at which the Afghan national security forces ought to be,” he said, stressing especially the importance of training the local police.

The NATO-led security assistance mission has about 40,000 troops in Afghanistan, of which 14,000 are American. Separately, the United States has 12,000 other troops there conducting counterterrorism and support missions. Mr. Gates in recent days signed a deployment order for an additional 3,200 marines for temporary duty in Afghanistan.

The general also disputed public assessments that the Afghan insurgency was growing, and he cited the number of low- to high-level insurgent leaders who were killed or captured. “That number is significant,” General McNeill said. “Many of those were jihadists who cut their teeth fighting the Soviets. They were good at their skills. They’re no longer on the battlefield. That’ll be very helpful.”

Commenting on a recent public debate about skills of various NATO nations at waging counter-insurgency missions, General McNeill said that “it is probably an incontrovertible truth that if you pull a huge alliance together, that the going-in position of different nationalities of that alliance, or at least their military forces, is somewhat different.”

He acknowledged differences in training, as well as varying political pressures from individual home capitals that affect the capabilities of those forces in Afghanistan.

Looking to the future, General McNeill predicted an exceedingly large opium harvest, and warned that significant portions of narcotics profits would go to Taliban and other insurgent activity.

Item in War Request Stokes Fears of Iran Strike

Congressional Quarterly reports:

Some Democrats are worried that President Bush’s funding request to enable B-2 “stealth” bombers to carry a new 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bomb is a sign of plans for an attack on Iran.

Buried in the $196.4 billion supplemental war spending proposal that Bush submitted to Congress on Oct. 22 is a request for $88 million to modify B-2 bombers so they can drop a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, a conventional bomb still in development that is the most powerful weapon designed to destroy targets deep underground.

A White House summary accompanying the supplemental spending proposal said the request for money to modify B-2s to carry the bombs came in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.” The summary provided no further details. The White House and the Air Force, in response to queries, did not provide additional clarification.

Previous statements by the Defense Department and the program’s contractors, along with interviews with military experts, suggest the weapon is meant for the kind of hardened targets found chiefly in Iran, which Bush suspects of developing nuclear weapons capability, and North Korea, which already has tested a nuclear device.

Bush has said repeatedly that he prefers to use diplomacy to resolve tensions with Iran over its nuclear program. But his request for funding to deliver the new bunker buster comes amid a sharp escalation of tough White House rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear program in recent days.

On Oct. 18, Bush said a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III.” Three days later, Vice President Dick Cheney warned of “serious consequences” if Tehran continued to enrich uranium.

Against that backdrop, the proposed funding for bunker busters has some in Congress worried.

James P. Moran, D-Va., a senior member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he did not believe the MOP could be used in Iraq or Afghanistan and cited Iran as the potential target for the bomb. He said he would oppose the funding.

“That’s a clear red flag,” Moran said.

Jim McDermott, D-Wash., an outspoken critic of Bush’s war policies, said the funding request was the latest of many signs that indicated Bush was contemplating an attack on Iran. McDermott said such a scenario was his “biggest fear between now and the election.”

“We are not authorizing Bush to use a 30,000-pound bunker buster,” he said. “They’ve been banging the drums the same way as they did in 2002 with Iraq.”

Stealth Delivery
The Boeing Co., in conjunction with Elgin Air Force Base in Florida, has been developing the Massive Ordnance Penetrator for several years and first tested the bomb in March. The 15-ton bomb would be dropped by B-52 or B-2 bombers.

In June, the Northrop Grumman Corp., maker of the B-2, won a $2.5 million contract from the Air Force to retro fit the bat-winged, stealth bombers so they could drop the new weapon. The new funding, if approved, would significantly expand that initiative.

The B-2 made its battlefield debut during the Kosovo War in 1999. It is optimal for use against sophisticated enemy air defenses because its radar-evading surface is difficult to detect.

In interviews Tuesday, military experts said the new weapon was not designed for the kind of counterinsurgency campaign being conducted by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They said the MOP could prove useful against other targets, notably underground Iranian facilities that are said to be producing nuclear weapons materials.

“A weapon like this is designed to deal with extremely hard and buried targets such as you would find in Iran or North Korea,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the conservative military think tank the Lexington Institute, who is also a consultant for some defense contractors.

“Clearly, in the case of North Korea, the likelihood of military action is receding as the Pyongyang government becomes more tractable,” said Thompson, referring to recent progress in diplomatic efforts to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs.

John Pike, an expert on defense and intelligence policy with Globalsecurity.org, said the MOP could be used against Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

“It’ll go through it like a hot knife through butter,” Pike said. He noted that the B-2 would be the best aircraft to deliver the bomb “if you want it to be a surprise party.”

It is not clear how quickly the new weapon could be ready for delivery by a B-2 if the $88 million were enacted. A spokesman for Northrop Grumman declined to provide a time frame.

Not all Democratic lawmakers oppose the weapon. Non-nuclear bunker busters have emerged in recent years as favorites of Democrats concerned about Bush administration’s earlier plans to conduct research on nuclear models.

“We need to have this as a conventional weapon,” said Norm Dicks, D-Wash., a member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. “It adds to our deterrent.”

War Brings Death and No Taxes

American citizens have yet to pay for the war against terrorism in the Middle East.

From the Minnesotan Daily:

Last week White House press secretary Dana Perino rejected the idea of an Iraq war tax, which was proposed by House Appropriations Chairman Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.). Said Perino: "We've always known that Democrats seem to revert to type, and they are willing to raise taxes on just about anything." Yet, President George W. Bush and his administration have disregarded the Republican type of fiscal responsibility for this current war.

By the end of this year, Congress estimates the total funds appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be nearly $600 billion. A 2006 Harvard and Columbia University study estimated the eventual cost of the wars at $2 trillion. Much of the money spent has not been paid for or accounted into the U.S. deficit because war funding has been provided through emergency supplemental bills. These bills, which have been used to finance wars since the Korean War, allow the U.S. government to wage war without an immediate economic impact on the American people. As a result, a war may be fought without any sacrifice from the citizen - only the soldier.

As the Iraq war drags on, taxes have not been raised, but instead continually cut by the Bush administration and the complacent past Republican majority in Congress. A country cannot sustain itself - properly pay for scientific research, infrastructure maintenance, education development, national security, etc. - when taxes are not raised to supplement the additional costs of war. The Bush administration is the first to cut taxes during wartime in over 200 years. Therefore the cost of the Iraq war will not be paid by the men and women of President Bush's generation. The bill will instead come due for their children's generation.

Perino continued, saying a war tax was "completely fiscally irresponsible."Alan Greenspan, the personification of fiscal conservatism, recently told the Wall Street Journal, "The Republican Party, which ruled the House, the Senate and the presidency, I no longer recognize."

It is the Bush administration that is completely fiscally irresponsible. Its decisions have led to not only the countless deaths of Americans and Iraqis, but will also lead to financial hardships this country has yet to experience.

Senate to Approve More War Funding

The Associated Press reports:

Powerless in their effort to bring troops home from Iraq, Senate Democrats were on track Monday to help pass a defense policy bill that would authorize another $150 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vote comes as the House planned to approve on Tuesday separate legislation requiring that President Bush give Congress a plan for eventual troop withdrawals.

The developments underscored the difficulty facing Democrats in the Iraq debate: They lack the votes to pass legislation ordering troops home and are divided on whether to cut money for combat, despite a mandate by supporters to end the war.

Hoping the political landscape changes in coming months, Democratic leaders say they will renew their fight when Congress considers the money Bush wants in war funding.

While the policy bill the Senate was set to approve Monday authorizes the money to be spent, it does not guarantee it; Bush will have to wait until Congress passes a separate appropriations bill before war funds are transferred to military coffers.

"I think that's where you're going to see the next dogfight," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., of the upcoming war spending bill.

Democrats say their options include directing that the money be spent on bringing troops home instead of combat; setting a date when money for the war is cut off, and identifying a goal to end the war to try to pressure Bush to bring troops home.

Similar attempts have been made but fallen short of the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate.

"Many of us have reached a breaking point on this," said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "I've done this for too many years. I've waited for the president to start bringing this war to an end. I'm not going to sign up for this any longer."

In the House, Democrats are pushing for a bill that would require the administration to report to Congress in 60 days and every 90 days thereafter on the status of its redeployment plans in Iraq.

The bill, sponsored by Democrats John Tanner of Tennessee and Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, was initially cast aside as too mild by Democratic leaders focused on tougher proposals ordering troops home this fall.

But after Democrats were unable to peel off Republican support, the Iraq debate stalled and some four dozen rank-and-file Democrats demanded a vote on the Abercrombie-Tanner bill.

"This will be the first time since the war in Iraq began that we are working together as a Congress instead of one party or another to be a constructive voice in the civilian management of operations in Iraq," Tanner said in a statement e-mailed to the Associated Press.

In February, Bush requested more than $140 billion for the war, and is expected to ask for another $42 billion to cover costs in the 2008 budget year, which began Monday. The Senate's defense policy bill authorizes Bush's initial request, plus an additional $23 billion for the purchase of bomb-resistent vehicles.

In addition to war money, the Senate's defense policy bill authorizes more than a half trillion dollars in annual military programs, including such big-ticket items as $10.1 billion for missile defense.

Republicans predict the bill is on track to be vetoed by President Bush because it includes hate-crimes legislation by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. The White House said it sees Kennedy's proposal, which would let federal law enforcement help states prosecute attacks on gays, as unnecessary.

The House passed its version of the defense authorization bill in May by a 397-27 vote. That $646 billion measure would trim hundreds of millions of dollars from some weapons modernization programs and use the money instead to aid troops in combat.

The House bill has drawn a veto threat from the White House because of provisions insisting the military rely heavily on American-made products and proposed changes to the Pentagon's personnel policies.

Republican Senators Call For End to Iraq War, But Only After Bush Leaves Office

The International Herald Tribune reports:

A small group of Republicans facing election fights next year have rallied around war legislation they think could unite the party: Call for an end to U.S. combat in Iraq, but wait until President George W. Bush is almost out of office.

The majority Democrats deemed the proposal a nonstarter and underscored on Friday the difficulty Congress has in striking a bipartisan compromise about the war. What attracts Democrats has repelled Republicans and vice versa, making it impossible so far to find middle ground.

"I don't support it at all," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "It doesn't do anything."

The proposal, by Republican Sen. George Voinovich, would require that Bush change the mission of U.S. troops from combat to primarily support roles, such as training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. infrastructure in Iraq. His legislation would set a goal of completing such a mission transition within 15 months.

If enacted immediately, that timeline would not kick in until Bush's last couple of weeks in office.

"That's very courageous," Reid quipped when a reporter asked him Friday about the proposal.

Co-sponsors of the bill include Sen. Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole and Norm Coleman, all Republicans. Of the sponsors, only Voinovich is not up for re-election in 2008.

In response to Reid's rejection, a Voinovich spokesman said the senator "will continue to work for a bipartisan, nonpolitical compromise so our nation finally speaks with one voice."

Likewise, Alexander said the country is ready for consensus on the war.

"It is inexcusable for the Senate to keep lecturing Baghdad about being in a political stalemate when we continue to be stuck in our own political stalemate on Iraq," he said in an e-mailed statement Friday.

The Senate is in the midst of wrapping up debate on a $672 billion (€474 billion) defense policy bill that would authorize more than a one-half trillion dollars (€350 billion) in annual defense spending and $150 billion (€106 billion) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $23 billion (€16 billion) added for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles.

The bill, on track to be passed on Monday, also would make it easier for Iraqi refugees to apply for U.S. visas. An amendment by Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, adopted on Thursday, would provide 5,000 special immigrant visas each year for five years; the new visas would be given to Iraqis who fear retribution because they worked for the U.S. government in Iraq.

Senate Democrats tried to attach legislation ordering an end to combat but repeatedly failed to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome parliamentary hurdles.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he worked closely with Voinovich until late Thursday in the hopes of striking a compromise. Levin wants to set the goal in nine months, but acknowledges he lacks the votes to pass it.

After Voinovich suggested extending the goal to 15 months, Democratic support dissipated, said Levin.

"To try to put this off until after the election, rather than a reasonable period of completion, I believe would be to unnecessarily introduce a political element to what is a bipartisan effort," he said.

Voinovich, Alexander and Coleman have been outspoken critics of Bush's war strategy, citing voter frustration with what they say seems an open-ended military commitment in Iraq. Coleman in particular has become a popular political target by anti-war groups hoping to replace him with a Democratic candidate willing to demand troop withdrawals.

But each of the Republican senators has rejected Democratic legislation that includes a timetable for troop withdrawals, contending they do not want to tie the hands of military generals and a wartime president.

While the defense policy bill approves war spending for next year, it does not guarantee it; Bush will have to wait for Congress to pass a separate appropriations bill that transfers money to the military's coffers.

Democratic leaders say the recent passage of a stopgap spending bill that funds the Pentagon at 2007 levels gives the military enough money to keep the war going for a few more months. A spending bill to pay for combat through next September might not be passed until early next year, officials said.