Barack Obama Seeks Extra War Funding.

April 12, 2009

April 12th, 2009 at 7:50 am - by Blake

In a letter released by the White House to the Speaker of the House of

Representatives Pelosi, President Barack Obama has asked Congress to

approve an additional $83.4 billion to help fund the U.S. operations in Iraq and

Afghanistan.

The sum of this request can be broken down to $75.8 billion for the Pentagon and

more than $7 billion for foreign aid; with $1.8 billion to be spent on Pakistan,

$3.6 billion to be spent on the Afghan National Army, and $350 million to be

spent on improving security along the U.S.-Mexico border and combating drug

gangs.

The funding is intended to help pay for the reduction of U.S. forces present in

Iraq to 140,000, and to increase the troop number in Afghanistan to 45,000 in

accordance with Mr. Obama's new Afghan strategy.

In his letter Obama claimed, " the Taliban is resurgent and Al-Qaeda threatens

America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border, " with White House

spokesman Gibbs adding that this extra funding " will be the last

supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan " .

This supplement would bring the total amount of military spending approved for

the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2009 to about $150 billion, in comparison to

totals of $188 billion in 2008 and $171 billion in 2007.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 the United States Congress

has passed 17 seperate emergency funding bills totaling approximately $822

billion for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and should this extra funding be

approved the cost of these two wars will have reached almost $1 trillion

dollars.

Obama's motion is likely to be passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress with

House Republican leader Boehner suggesting Republicans are likely to

support this additional funding as well.

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