Let's review George Bush's week: 1) Bush won't spend a couple billion on health care for kids; 2) Bush now wants another $190 billion for his endless war; and 3) We seen more evidence that Bush's endless war is destroying our military capacity.
This war is getting more costly in both human lives and financially every year. The $190 billion is the largest request so far:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates asked Congress yesterday to approve an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the Bush administration's 2008 war funding request to nearly $190 billion -- the largest single-year total for the wars so far.We need a change in course, desperately.
The move came as Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff and former top U.S. commander in Iraq, warned lawmakers that the Army is stretched dangerously thin because of current war operations and would probably have trouble responding to a major conflict elsewhere. "The current demand for our forces exceeds the sustainable supply," Casey said yesterday. "We are consumed with meeting the demands of the current fight and are unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as necessary for other potential contingencies."
The administration's funding request -- which came on the same day that the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a nonbinding resolution calling for the split of Iraq into three semiautonomous regions -- would boost war spending this year by nearly 15 percent and would bring the total cost of both conflicts to more than $800 billion since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the Congressional Research Service. The request comes two weeks after President Bush announced a limited troop drawdown from Iraq starting in December and the continuation of the "surge" troop increase through next summer. In the days since, Democrats have failed to force a shift in policy on troop rotations or the adoption of withdrawal timelines, but the debate over war funding offers them another chance to push for a change in course.
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