Bush's Defense Request Nears Historic Highs

[Reincarnated]

Tank-Size Defense Request

By Peter Spiegel

The Los Angeles Times

Bush is expected to ask for $481 billion. But the military seeks more.

Washington - When the Bush administration unveils its annual spending request Monday, it is expected to ask for a defense budget of $481 billion - near historic highs, even when adjusted for inflation.

It will also ask for additional funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, taking the cost of those conflicts this year to close to $165 billion, and will present estimates for next year's costs that will push war spending above the total cost of Vietnam.

But if the military's top officers have their way, today's proposal may be only a precursor to a future of even larger defense budgets.

The chiefs of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force are gearing up for a long-term campaign to convince Congress and the public that the growing demands of the Iraq war - plus the administration's aggressive global security ambitions - require tens of billions more each year to meet the nation's defense needs.

For more than a year, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the outgoing Army chief of staff, has repeatedly pointed out that defense spending accounts for only about 3.8 percent of the gross domestic product - a figure that is projected to drop over the next five years, to near the lowest levels since World War II, even though the U.S. is involved in a protracted war.

He is calling for a wider national debate on whether that percentage should be significantly increased - and the chiefs of the Navy and the Air Force said in interviews last week that they would publicly support that call in upcoming hearings on the defense budget.

"In working that (budget) problem, I believe I'm seeing challenges that leads us to the notion that maybe it's time to have this discussion about a higher percentage of GDP" devoted to defense, Air Force Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley said in a telephone interview during a trip to Afghanistan and Iraq.

"It's going to be very, very hard to get where we're going as defined in the (Pentagon's strategic plans) and to do this business on a global scale with the resources that we have."

Added Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen: "At 3.8 percent, it just isn't enough for the strategic appetite, and the strategic appetite is tied directly to the world we're living in."

According to a senior Pentagon official, the Air Force alone is expected to tell Congress that it will need an additional $20 billion per year over the next five years, on top of the White House funding request, just to meet just to meet the strategic plans laid out by the Pentagon and the increasing demands resulting from the buildup in Iraq.

It is certainly not unexpected for military officers to seek more money for personnel and weapons systems, defense budget experts note. But the increasingly vocal complaints from all three service chiefs, even as the administration is increasing troop levels in Iraq, add more complexity to the debate over the war and the challenges presented by other global adversaries.

It is also, in part, a reflection of a view held by many in the armed services - from enlisted personnel in war zones to senior officers at the Pentagon - that the military is the only U.S. institution bearing the burden of the Iraq war. In interviews and in comments reported by superior officers, many veterans have argued that the U.S. hardly seems like a country at war, with civilians making little sacrifice even as troops put their lives on the line.

That potent mix is likely to become awkward for both the White House and Congress. For the White House, the services' appeal for more funding comes as Democrats argue that repeated deployments to Iraq are leaving the military without the equipment and personnel it needs if other situations arise.

At the same time, congressional Democrats - whose new House and Senate majorities are largely based on opposition to Bush's Iraq policy - must also balance that opposition with the public's ongoing support for the troops currently in harm's way.

"Nobody wants to cut off somebody's body armor or someone's Humvee, or somebody's ability to sustain themselves in Baghdad," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition," referring to Democratic concerns that military spending is already too high. "Many people believe that the administration will turn around and say, `See? They cut money from our troops that are there already.' "

Any increase in military spending above the administration's request would be on top of what is, in inflation-adjusted dollars, one of the biggest defense budgets in history.

But even at those levels, the service chiefs argue that the war's wear and tear on their equipment, along with the strategic planning that calls on them to check such global threats as a rapidly modernizing China, a nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly belligerent Iran, has begun to outstrip their ability to fund the Army brigades, Air Force wings and Navy strike groups needed to meet all contingencies.

Some defense budget experts charge that the military is in a crisis of its own making. Although critics acknowledge that the armed forces faced a nearly decade-long "procurement holiday" at the end of the Cold War, they argue that the services chose to replace aging, overused weaponry with highly sophisticated, complicated armaments that in some cases cost three times the systems they replaced.

By attempting to take huge technological leaps instead of incremental improvements, these critics argue, the replacement weapons face years of delays and vast cost increases, forcing the Pentagon to buy fewer of each weapon.

"They have demonstrated that they have absolutely no discipline in dealing with the money they've gotten, and their only response when they get more money is to ask for still more money," said Winslow Wheeler, a former defense budget staffer in the Senate who now works for the nonpartisan Center for Defense Information.

According to an October study by the Congressional Budget Office, the Pentagon may need as much as $560 billion every year - or $80 billion more than the administration is proposing in the non-war portion of its 2008 budget - just to pay for all the weapons on order and to meet growing personnel and operational costs.

The services insist that they are working to drive down such delays and cost spirals, but defend the need to push the technological envelope.

"When you actually have to put someone in an airplane and send them into combat, do you want to win this ballgame by one run in the bottom of the 9th, or do want to have the game called in the 7th inning by 20 runs?" asked Moseley.

Despite occasionally intense inter-service rivalries, all three chiefs insist that, despite their individual needs, they are not arguing for a shift in resources from one branch to the other. Instead, each has said he will be pushing for a bigger pie overall.

Defense budget experts said that any decision by Congress to examine greater increases in defense spending could evolve into a defining discussion over U.S. foreign policy goals and the Pentagon's vision of its armed services in a post-Cold War world.

"Clearly there's a big mismatch between the projected costs of the Defense Department's plans and the money that's currently projected to be provided for those plans," said Steven Kosiak, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent policy research organization. "Then the question becomes: Is the problem that not enough money is projected, or are the plans too ambitious?"

Source

Mind you, this war is the only major US conflict besides the American-Mexican War(1846-1848) in which the president has not asked its citizens, nor wealthy individuals, to make special contributions or pay higher taxes to help the country in a time of need and war. Instead the president gives tax breaks & cuts to the wealthy and large corporations while spending money like drunken sailors to pursue a personal agenda.

[Aztec Warrior]

Iraq is a lost cause and a tremendous waste of money......dollars that will be now needed for new and improved or repaired equipment. System upgrades and new Navy ships are all effected by the drain of military funds to that country.

Bush doesn't not know how to prosecute a war. Winning the hearts and minds was a joke and can never win a war. You fight a war to win....or don't get involved.

Soldiers in Iraq view troop surge as a lost cause

By Tom Lasseter

McClatchy Newspapers

Tom Lasseter/MCt

Staff Sgt. Nekia Whatley, 29, of Montgomery, Alabama, questions two Iraqis digging a ditch on the side of the road to see if they were preparing the site for a roadside bomb.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Army 1st Lt. Antonio Hardy took a slow look around the east Baghdad neighborhood that he and his men were patrolling. He grimaced at the sound of gunshots in the distance. A machine gunner on top of a Humvee scanned the rooftops for snipers. Some of Hardy's men wondered aloud if they'd get hit by a roadside bomb on the way back to their base.

"To be honest, it's going to be like this for a long time to come, no matter what we do," said Hardy, 25, of Atlanta. "I think some people in America don't want to know about all this violence, about all the killings. The people back home are shielded from it; they get it sugar-coated."

While senior military officials and the Bush administration say the president's decision to send more American troops to pacify Baghdad will succeed, many of the soldiers who're already there say it's a lost cause.

"What is victory supposed to look like? Every time we turn around and go in a new area there's somebody new waiting to kill us," said Sgt. 1st Class Herbert Gill, 29, of Pulaski, Tenn., as his Humvee rumbled down a dark Baghdad highway one evening last week. "Sunnis and Shiites have been fighting for thousands of years, and we're not going to change that overnight."

"Once more raids start happening, they'll (insurgents) melt away," said Gill, who serves with the 1st Infantry Division in east Baghdad. "And then two or three months later, when we leave and say it was a success, they'll come back."

Soldiers interviewed across east Baghdad, home to more than half the city's 8 million people, said the violence is so out of control that while a surge of 21,500 more American troops may momentarily suppress it, the notion that U.S. forces can bring lasting security to Iraq is misguided.

Story continues

Edited February 5, 2007 by Aztec Warrior

[EmpressStarXVII]

WHAT???? 481 Billion? What happened to 100 billion? My jaw dropped when I read that

[NiCkC818]

Just out of curiousity, what if he is using the billions for a more sinister reason? Cough Iran Cough Cough.

[IronGhost]

WHAT???? 481 Billion? What happened to 100 billion? My jaw dropped when I read that

The $481 bil is the annual budget to run the entire miltary and all branches every year, just for one year. This figure does not include the $100 billion or so being spent every year on Iraq, Afghan.

The Iraq war is "off budget" so to speak -- all that means is that they're not counting it as military spending -- they call it "emergency spending." Also, they are not taking this money into account when Bush promises to eliminate the deficite in 5 years.

[el midgetron]

The Iraq war is "off budget" so to speak -- all that means is that they're not counting it as military spending -- they call it "emergency spending." Also, they are not taking this money into account when Bush promises to eliminate the deficite in 5 years.

lol, their books are cooked more than a front operation for the mob. Troops who die from wounds after being evacuated from Iraq are not included in the death toll count. The troop surge is closer to 50k than the 20k they said they needed. And this 'emergency money" isnt to be included in the total "promised" to be eliminated by Bush 3 years after he leaves office? lol

"emergency money" lol, the moron had no plan for withdrawing the troops but this is an "emergency"? What a snow job.

[EmpressStarXVII]

I just found this article. 2.9 trillion dollar request

I truly do think he is going senile. Maybe it's getting to him that he only has 2 years left in office and it's making him crazy >_>.