US: The Bush administration, faced with a growing insurgency and record fuel costs, plans early next year to seek $50 billion to $75 billion in emergency funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration and congressional officials said yesterday.
The White House Office of Management and Budget said it was premature to discuss the size of the upcoming supplemental spending request, which would bring total US funding for military operations and reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to as much as $280 billion.
The White House said President Bush, if re-elected on November 2nd, would submit his next funding request to Congress in late January or early February, following a full assessment of the Pentagon's needs in the coming months.
The White House had initially said the Pentagon would need around $50 billion in additional funding early next year. But officials said the final package could come to as much as $75 billion, and possibly more if the anti-American insurgency intensifies and the US is forced to send additional troops to Iraq.
Democratic critics accused Mr Bush and his top advisers of understating the costs to bolster support for war.
Before the invasion, the then-White House budget director, Mr Mitch Daniels, predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavour," and deputy defence secretary Mr Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."
Yet so far Congress has approved $120 billion for Iraq and another $60 billion for Afghanistan, according to White House estimates. On top of that, Congress has set up a $25 billion contingency fund for the Pentagon.
"This is the incredible price of going it almost alone in Iraq," Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said in Wisconsin. "How much more will the American people have to pay?" During the presidential debates Kerry claimed the Bush administration already had spent $200 billion in Iraq, prompting a sharp retort from the Bush campaign. - (Reuters)