Bush details $70 billion war funding request for 2009

WASHINGTON — President Bush sent lawmakers a $70 billion request Friday to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, which would give the next president breathing room to make his or her own war policy.

Friday's request fills in the details of the $70 billion placeholder that the White House asked for when it sent its budget to Congress in February. The money is for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Congressional analysts say Bush's request would bring the total spending since Sept. 11, 2001, to fight terrorism and conduct the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to $875 billion.

The request comes as Democrats on Capitol Hill are struggling to move Bush's pending $108 billion request for the current year. Democratic leaders say they're likely to add the $70 billion for next year to that measure, which would allow them to avoid a politically painful vote on war funding in the heat of campaigning for the November elections.

Anti-war Democrats are frustrated at their inability to force the president to scale back war operations and hate to vote to keep the Iraq war going. At the same time, Bush has promised to veto the war funding bill if Democrats add money for domestic programs and present him with a bill over his request.

The bulk of the new money, $45 billion, would fund U.S. combat operations, but there's also $3 billion to deal with roadside bombs and $2 billion to cope with rising fuel costs.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, Congress has provided $526 billion for the Iraq war alone, with the two pending requests coming on top of that. Operations in Afghanistan have cost $140 billion.

Friday's request also contains $770 million in additional food aid and other assistance to try to ease the global food crisis. There's also $2.6 billion to airlift new mine-resistant vehicles into the war zone and maintain them there.

The Afghan military would receive $3.7 billion for counterinsurgency efforts; the Iraqi military would get $2 billion for the same purpose.

Bush also asked for $1.7 billion for infrastructure, social programs and economic development initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan under a programs designed to win the support of local populations.

Pakistan, a key ally in fighting terrorism, would receive $193 million in aid.

Comments

[mfsomom]

Is he kidding? Tragically, we know he is not. I have never seen such a delusional, self aggrandizing man.

not one more dollar. not one more lie. not one more life.


Obama '08

[repugssuck]

DELUSIONAL is the only word that comes to mind.......the billions spent on this war and the tax cuts for the wealthy are not affecting our economy........and Roger "SCREW ball" Clemens is the guy your daughter should be dating - priceless!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Lisette]

THIS DEBT IS ON THE HEADS OF ALL THOSE WHO VOTED FOR BUSH

[Dan909]

...but on the backs of every taxpayer alive today, and even those born many years from now, who likely won't even know who/what Bush was. He's leaving a legacy, all right... for those in the right circles, buckets of money; for the rest, buckets of blood.

[eliska]

i guess yours is not really a quandary. if a tax paying child down the time sometime has its head attached s/he will understand the global war against islamizes terrorists.

hopefully by then s/he can drive a car powered by crude oil/natural gas produced inside our borders....how novel!

[raw915]

OK class, let's do some math.

But before we start, let me ask, when you spend money in a store, who gets to keep it? The store owner, of course. Good.

Now how big is one trillion? A number may help: one trillion = $1,000,000,000,000 OK, how many people live in Iraq? 20,000,000. Someone said we've spent a $Trillion in Iraq. That equates to $1,000,000,000,000/20,000,000 = $50,000/person. According to http://peacefuljustice.caltech.edu/2003-10/5.shtml the annual income in Iraq is less than $500. This means American taxpayers have paid each Iraqi man, woman, and child one hundred years worth of annual income. They should be rich!

What, you say, the Iraqis didn't keep all that money! But if they didn't, then who did? The store owner didn't keep all the money you paid the cashier? Of course he didn't keep all of it, but he got a decent amount, or he'd be out of business. Can we safely say each Iraqi man, woman, and child got a decent amount of their $50,000?. Well, considering the high percentage of poor Iraqis, I'd guess their share may have been a few pennies.

So where did the remaining 0.999,999,999 $Trillion go? Where? Where? Help me, class. The news media isn't saying. No clues at all. All we hear is a "hundred $Billion" here, "seventy $Billion" there, but never who gets to keep most of that "hundred $Billion" here or "seventy $Billion" there. Who? Who? Help me, class.

[eliska]

ah ha! so you too have found the liberal media scrimps when it comes to viable details ....

you might try reading on - line foreign news papers as i do. with the click of a button one can read among other things most countries budgets past and pending in almost any language one desires.

[LoriB]

Are there any pictures of this man where he doesn't look completely stupid?

[raw915]

I think there are some examples, especially when he's discussing serious security issues, which are important to every freedom-loving American. For example http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushpetgoat.htm

[guntotinganglion]

Along with being the worst, this man is the least conservative, most radical, most profligate President in US history. Everything he does is an affront to real conservatives and genuine conservatism. Everything he has done should have long since earned him a lifetime in prison, if there were even a semblance of real justice in this country. And if the actual law were adhered to, he would be facing the next worst punishment to life imprisonment, since he has openly violated laws that carry the death penalty. Sad that the law no longer means anything even remotely related to justice.

[Georgiapundit]

These numbers don"t matter in the eyes of about 40%+ Americans who hold Mc Cain and Clinton in a positive light. $1,000,000,000,000,000 and counting are being spent on a war most we're duped into supporting, even as some voted for the Authorization to use military force against Iraq in 2002. Last month was the highest month on record in U.S. troop casualties, now 5 years later. Remembering clearly, Hillary Clinton and John Mc Cain were soldiers in the drum beat to war.

People are still voting for them as though the lack of judgment on these candidates part means nothing.

If Mc Cain or Clinton becomes president of the Unites States then eight more years of hell will be what we deserve. Kids are voting in record numbers and still I see older generations voting based upon race, gender and the old divisions of the 1960"s. I digress¦what happened to the generations of the 60"s? What happened to that voice of change?

Let us have our change!

[k6007]

Look for the double whammy in Nov. Fl and IN. Greg Palast(?) has already called it. Prez-elect McPuppet.

[ldelp84227]

This story is very sad considering what is happening to our country during this administration. Democrat or Republican, something is very wrong and it seems like there is nothing we can do. I am very scared. So many people hungry right here, sick, without jobs, and Bush wants to give money to the Mexican military. Creepy. Linda

[k6007]

Stop deluding Yourself!!!!!!!!!

Bush didn't do this by himself, he had plenty of help from Democrats! Until we face this fact....we're scroooed.

I know saying this will teeoff some of my fellow democrats, but I am truely past caring.....The Clintons are foul, disgusting, slimy, corrupt, bast**ds. That's as nice as I can put it. Look over their policies and tell me which one helped you the most.

[VolvoBirkenstock]

JohnKemp

Hey, don't forget that Teddy's $14 billion boongoggle has already killed a woman.
-----

Seems as if it was the PRIVATE contractors and designers who were to blame, Forrest.

Criminal Charges Avoided: Big Dig Contractors' Settlement Tops $458 Million
Jan 23 2008 12:37PM

The firms responsible for designing and managing Boston"s Big Dig project reached a $458 million settlement with state and federal officials today. The settlement will allow these companies to avoid criminal charges in the 2006 fatal tunnel collapse and any civil liabilities with infrastructure problems. The settlement and terms were announced this afternoon at a press conference with U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan and Attorney General Martha Coakley. Under the settlement terms, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff will pay $407 million and 24 other companies involved in the project will pay about $51 million.

http://www.designnews.com/blog/1080000108.html

[JohnKemp]

Really? WOW!

The mighty givernment blaming its own failures on private contractors & using its bottomless pit of taxpayer funds to "make its case" against those companies.

Hard to believe.

As the president of the adhesive contracting company stated, "The government came after us because they know that we were the ones with the least resources & the easiest one to blame."

Again, the "Big Dig" was a farce from its inception at $3 billion (I believe that was the original number) which blossomed to 14 billion; ALL to serve no purpose whatsoever except for drunken Teddy to reward the union goons.

Panels caving in from the beginning and killing a woman driving through one of the tunnels.

teddy & women dying seem to go hand-in-hand.

[k6007]

I just finished watching 'Hacking Democracy', and am reeeaaalllly Pissed. Why haven't our democratically controlled congress done anything about these stinking electronic voting machines???

C**ksu**ers!! They're using the very same tactics as repugs. They have us surrounded people. If we ddon't get some nerve, gumption, indignation, and Patriotism, soon....We're done.

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

let's start with accountability in the highest office of the land --

[k6007]

Let's start with those closest to us. City, State, Federal....like dominoes.

[GonzoFactor]

How much is $1 trillion? If you began spending $1/minute and spent it 24 hours per day every day, it would take a bit over 2,018,000 years to spend the trillion. Think of it another way: if you spent $1000/minute the same way starting at 12:01 am on Jan. 1 of the year One A.D., you still would have a little over 10 years left to go. The average American would have spent his year's salary in well under an hour at this rate.

And we're sending almost $200 million to Pakistan, current home of the Al Quaida top echelon, a country with a notoriously corrupt government and poor monetary controls. I wonder how much of that will be diverted to our enemies?

[guntotinganglion]

How much is a trillion dollars? How bout three trillion, which is the current projected cost of all this (low end I would say) insanity?

If you had a stack of 3 trillion US one dollar bills, it would stand 203,598 miles high, or about 90% of the distance to the moon. That's a big stack o' cash.

On that note, how many Apollo programs would this money buy (not taking into account 1960 vs 2008 dollars)? 125 Apollo Programs (750 landings).

And what if those dollar bills were end to end? 290,719,697 miles...or better than half way to Saturn. Another way to envision it is, if it were in a circle it would span the circumference of the Earth's orbit around the sun, almost exactly.

Just some numbers to indicate how insane that amount of money really is.

[guntotinganglion]

Oops...make that halfway to Jupiter...much closer!

[GonzoFactor]

Whoops! Math errors!

At $1/min, it would take less time than I posted, a mere 1,901,000 years. At $1000/min, we would have finished in the Spring of 1901, a mere 1900 years plus a little. I guess that makes it all better now.

[bluesnot]

Clinton voted for this trillion dollar war. And momentum is building behind her? Unbelievable.

[k6007]

Fear. The average American has become a Friggin coward!! Be afraid of the black guy, sixties radicals, muslims, preachers, taxes, gays, abortion, science, logic, and commonsense.

[JohnKemp]

Well, considering that AWOL Obama is her opponent, it's really not so "unbelievable."

[VolvoBirkenstock]

AWOL?

Making things up again, Forrest?

WOW! that "is" (sic)

[Canaris]

How about 1.7 billion for infrastructure in THIS country? 1.7 billion for Iraqi infrastructure, and Hillary wants to take 10 billion more out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund so that I can buy an extra half tank of gas this summer. Oh wait, that's right, she's going to get that and the windfall tax on oil companies to pay for it through Congress and have Bush sign it before Memorial day, so what am I worried about?

[buckygreen]

Moron. Liar. Torturer. Mass Murderer. War Criminal. Traitor.

George W Bush.