Cost of the Idiot's Crusade: $12.5 billion & climbing

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

Agence France Presse via Times of India - May 9, 2002

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=9304364


War on Terror [sic] Has Cost Pentagon $12.5 Billionn So Far

WASHINGTON, May 9 (AFP)--The war on terror [sic] launched by
President Bush in response to the September 11 attacks has already
cost the US military nearly $12.5 billion and is expected to gobble
up even more money before the fiscal year is through, according to a
top Pentagon official.

"We have already committed nearly 14 billion and actually obligated
approximately 12.5 billion," Dov Zakheim, the Defense Department's
chief comptroller, told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Zakheim was part of a delegation of top Pentagon officials -- led by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld himself -- which marched to Capitol
Hill Tuesday to press lawmakers for additional funds to pay for
antiterrorism [sic] operations from Afghanistan to the Philippines to
North America proper.

A grave-looking Rumsfeld led the charge by outlining a broad range of
threats faced by the United States from within and without in the
post-Cold War world.

"The significant difference today is that we are vulnerable not only
to external attack, but to hostile forces among us who enter our
country easily, who remain anonymous and who use the freedom America
affords to plan and execute their violent deeds," he said.

Shortly after the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in
New York and the section of the Pentagon building here, the military
requested and was granted nearly $18 billion for its anti-terrorism
[sic] campaign -- in addition to its regular 2002 appropriations.

Many expected the money would tide the Pentagon over until the end of
the fiscal year on September 30.

But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd said he had
been informed that the military's anti-terrorism [sic] fund will, in
fact, run out of cash as early as this month.

Rumsfeld's message to Congress was: open the purse again. According
to the defense secretary the situation could be remedied by giving
the Pentagon 14 billion dollars more for the remainder of the year
and increase its budget by $48 billion in fiscal 2003.

The war in Afghanistan, which, according to the Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) will cost $7.9 billion this fiscal year, is just part of
the Pentagon's wish list.

The request includes $43 million to bolster port security, $91
million to set up the Northern Command designed to strengthen
anti-terrorism [sic] defenses of North America, as well as funds to
build roads in the Philippines where US special forces help fight
radical Islamic rebels, according to defense officials.

 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytlab-05.09.02-15:20:54-10517