posted on May 5, 2006 03:29:11 PM new
We can't expect people like helen....and most times kiara either to actually ADMIT the mantra they keep repeating has been PROVEN incorrect.
They have nothing else to offer....helen's been demanding we 'admit defeat and withdraw' since we first step on Iraqi land. She's taken saddam's side against our nation's.
She will DIE believing SHE supports this country....when time and time again her statements....the sources she uses has proven so differently.
But I remember she, kiara and some others like them....live in a fantasy land....where every person in the world is well taken care of by the government...happy....and lives in their false 'utopia world'. It's never been that way....it's never going to be that way.....but they continue to live in their 'dream' world....where all should be perfect and gov. should make it that way for us.
Someday they'll be forced to WAKE up and see reality....but don't hold your breath waiting for THAT to EVER happen in our lifetime.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation:
What would a Democrat president have done at that point? Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack.
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on May 5, 2006 03:33 PM ]
posted on May 5, 2006 03:40:32 PM newANOTHER OF KIARA'S.....SICK LIES
She's hallucinating again too. Doing drugs kiara???? Sure sounds like it.
kiara LIES AGAIN: "Such sweet memories.......of when lindak was so ignorant that she didn't even realize that women served in Iraq".....
I was NEVER not aware women served in our Armed Forces....as kiara likes to keep lying about. My own Mother served in WWII.
The issue at that time was whether or not women in the service/army were serving ON THE FRONT LINES, in DIRECT combat, or not.
Of course, kiara became so confused....and has continued to lie about this for YEARS now.
But that's kiara for you.....a LIAR....and so proud of it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation:
What would a Democrat president have done at that point? Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack.
Ann Coulter
[ edited by Linda_K on May 5, 2006 03:49 PM ]
posted on May 5, 2006 04:50:03 PM new
SECOND UPDATE FOR 5/05/2006
Total 2416 Dead American Troops up 7 Dead Troops since this morning.
Bear,LIAR_K and Washingtonebayer you all seem to be very worried about lies. I will ask you three this question. AFTER 2416 AMERICAN LIVES AND HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF AMERICAN DOLLARS. WHO IS IN CHARGE IN IRAQ?
05/05/06 Reuters: Iraqi oil engineers kidnapped
Gunmen kidnapped six engineers working for Iraq's state-owned Northern Oil Company on Friday, police said. The six were returning to the oil city of Kirkuk...when they were stopped about 30 km (18 miles) from Kirkuk. No further details were available.
05/05/06 Reuters: Police major killed by gunmen in Diwaniya
A police major was killed by gunmen near his house in Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad, on Thursday, police said.
Didn't Rumsfeld tell us the area south of Baghdad was a peaceful safe area?
posted on May 5, 2006 05:09:53 PM new
I reiterate that when I have something to say on any topic my words will be here for all to see.
Never have I ever said I want the government to take care of me or everyone else so once again lindak is lying and uttering pure crap. I work in the real world daily so I'm certainly not living in any fantasy land. I support myself and don't have my hands out to the government nor do I expect them or anyone else to pay my way.
As far as lindak not knowing that females served in Iraq, here is the thread...... she didn't know and then she threw a tantrum and edited some of her follow-up.
Thank heaven there are men [and maybe women] serving today.
Now lindak, I found that link so can you put up a link to any thread where I said I want every person in the world to be taken care of by the government?
Or is this where once again you aren't able to support your claims so you lol and tsk and bold your words and act like a nutcase and say no one can control you and that you can post all the BS you want to?
posted on May 5, 2006 11:14:42 PM newGOD...some people...
Why do you again bring God into all your rants, lindak?
When you call on him do you feel less of a coward when you sneak back with some drivel trying to cover up the fact that you have no links to back your lies?
I didn't lie about anything. If you don't want embarrassing links brought up again then be damn careful next time you label me a liar.
posted on May 6, 2006 06:01:45 AM new
Iraq War update 5/06/2006
Total 2417 Dead American Troops.
Total 17,874 Wounded American Troops.
HEY IRAQ WAR SUPPORTERS WHO IS IN CHARGE IN IRAQ AFTER 2417 DEAD TROOPS AND HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF AMERICAN DOLLARS SPENT?
IRAQIS CHEER HELICOPTER CRASH
05/06/06 skynews: Iraqis Cheer Chopper Crash
A British helicopter has crashed in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, witnesses and police have reported. It is not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to go down but one policeman at the scene said it had been hit by a missile. Four British servicemen are feared dead.
Kiara is not a liar, you old deranged fool. You have called nearly everyone in the entire online auction community liars simply because we don't agree with your reactionary, narrowminded viewpoint and your uninformed opinions. Few people in the United States are still so deluded that they believe WMD were found in Iraq. Few people still believe that George Bush is a saint. And count yourself among the very, very few who worship with unbridled adulation at the feet of George Bush.
You believe that most Americans are liars. That's an informed opinion based on your crazy rants posted here during the last several years.
Your homework for today....Define fact, lie and opinion and know how to distinguish lie from opinion and fact from opinion.
They tell you on OTWA to PISS OFF. Why can't you get the message?
posted on May 6, 2006 06:40:50 AM newWhat a sad group of deluded fools.
Fortunately most Americans now see the light.
If that is true then why are we not seeing impeachment hearings going on or about to be any day?
I'll tell you why. It's because those are just words that have no real meaning other than to who wrote them and a few of her supporters but by no means do they reflect the wishes of the majority in this country.
posted on May 6, 2006 06:50:15 AM new
Iraqis cheer after British chopper crashes
BASRA, Iraq (AP) — A British military helicopter crashed in the southern city of Basra on Saturday and Iraqi police said the four-member crew was killed. A large crowd of Iraqis threw stones and set at least one armored vehicle on fire as British forces raced to the scene.
Police Capt. Mushtaq Khazim said the helicopter went down in a residential area of the city, apparently after being hit by a missile or a rocket. He said the four-member crew had died but no Iraqis were hurt on the ground.
The British military confirmed there were casualties but provided no other details.
British forces backed by armored vehicles rushed to the area but were met by a hail of stones from members of the crowd, who jumped for joy and raised their fists as a plume of thick smoke rose into the air from the crash site. The crowd also set at least one British tank on fire.
The chaotic scene was widely shown on in Iraqi state television and on the Al-Jazeera satellite station.
In violence elsewhere, a suicide bomber wearing an Iraqi army uniform entered an Iraqi base in Tikrit and detonated an explosives belt, killing an Iraqi lieutenant colonel, a major and a lieutenant, and wounding a lieutenant colonel, said Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Mohammed Jassim.
The U.S. command also announced that an American soldier was killed by the roadside bomb in Baghdad on Friday. At least 2,417 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003.
Britain has about 8,000 troops based in the mostly Shiite Basra area, and southern Iraq has long been much less violent than Baghdad and western Iraq where Sunni Arab-led insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq launch many attacks against Iraqi civilians and U.S. and Iraqi forces.
But Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiite religious leader, hasn't always been able to keep growing anti-coalition fervor among Shiite radicals under control.
In September, British forces arrested two officials of Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, raising tensions in Basra. About a week later, militiamen and residents clashed with British troops after two British soldiers disguised as Arabs were detained by Iraqi authorities.
British forces launched a raid to free the men and an Iraqi judge issued a homicide warrant for their arrest. British officials said that the warrant was illegal under Iraqi law and that their personnel were immune to prosecution in Iraq.
The bomber in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit targeted a group of Iraqi army recruits who had just finished their training and were being dispatched to another area of Iraq, Jassim said. Officials in Tikrit said the bomber apparently told guards that he wanted to see one of the officers and was admitted to the base without being searched.
The attack in the Sunni Arab city 80 miles north of Baghdad appeared to be part of a campaign by Sunni-led insurgents to discourage Sunnis from joining Iraqi security forces. The Bush administration hopes that newly trained Iraqi soldiers and police can one day improve security in Iraq enough to begin withdrawing U.S. forces from the country.
In a bid to counter the U.S. efforts, Sunni militants have targeted Sunnis who cooperate with the government, including Iraqi army and police.
Earlier this week, a suicide bomber killed two policemen and 13 police recruits in the Sunni city of Fallujah, police said. At least seven Sunnis who completed army basic training in Habaniyah have been found dead in their hometowns of Ramadi and Khaldiyah, police said.
A roadside bomb also exploded Saturday near a Polish convoy in Diwaniyah south of Baghdad, wounding three soldiers, Poland's Defense Ministry said. Poland has about 900 troops in south-central Iraq, where it commands an international force.
In other developments Saturday, according to police:
• Suspected insurgents kidnapped seven Iraqis, including three paramilitary policemen, near the town where a roadside bomb killed three U.S. service members the day before.
• Roadside bombs hit two Iraqi police patrols in Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding two policemen and six civilians.
• Two rockets or mortars were fired in northern Baghdad, one hitting a home and killing two children and wounding a woman.
• Police in Baghdad found the bodies of seven Iraqi men, five of them relatives from Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, who had been kidnapped and brutally killed.
• A roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul wounded two Iraqi policemen. Police also found the bullet-ridden bodies a father and son who had been kidnapped earlier in the day.
• Iraqi and U.S. forces searched shops for weapons and imposed a curfew in Rawah, a Sunni city 175 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
posted on May 6, 2006 08:41:46 AM new
You are correct, Helen. It's time lindak learned that a difference of opinion or a fact is not a lie just because SHE doesn't happen to believe it.
lindak, what you fail to understand here is that you are allowed your opinion but don't expect all to agree with you. I don't expect all to agree with me either.
And when you make claims about me or my beliefs as you've done several times in this topic alone, perhaps you would be more believable if you could back it up with a link showing my words. So far for several years now you've been unable to ever do that.
Whats left of the CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT,BUSH AND IRAQ WAR SUPPORTERS have nothing left to say about supporting their failed crooked leaders. The smarter people on their own side is even abandoning them.
I am enjoying watching the few neocons that are left around here being EXPOSED FOR THE LIARS they have been for years.
The British Helicopter was shot down in an area that people like LIAR_K have told us all how safe and peaceful these areas are.
"I DON'T GIVE THEM HELL I JUST TELL THEM THE TRUTH AND THEY THINK ITS HELL." HARRY TRUMAN
posted on May 6, 2006 02:14:47 PM new
WASHINGTONEBAYER,
Got something to say besides RUNNING ON EMPTY name calling lets hear it.
Maybe can you can tell me who is in charge in Iraq. In charge after 3 years with a Total 2417 Dead American Troops and a Total 17,874 Wounded American Troops. Plus HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of American dollars spent.
05/06/06 AP; 13 bodies found in Baghdad.
Police in Baghdad found the bodies of 13 Iraqi men, five of them relatives from Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, who had been kidnapped and brutally killed, police said.
COME AND JOIN THE GREAT AMERICAN PROTEST ON NOVEMBER 7th 2006
posted on May 7, 2006 06:42:37 PM new
Iraq War update 5/07/2006
Total 2418 Dead American Troops and still counting
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Car bombs killed at least 16 people and injured dozens Sunday in Baghdad and a Shiite holy city, dashing hopes that formation of a new government alone would provide a quick end to the country's violence.
At least 25 others were killed or found dead Sunday, including a U.S. Marine who was mortally wounded in the insurgent bastion of Anbar province in western Iraq, police and the U.S. military said.
'Read below what women are going through it Iraq.
Women in Iraq are living a nightmare that is hidden from the west. Now one has turned film-maker to give us a window on to what they endure. She tells Natasha Walter what she saw
Monday May 8, 2006
The Guardian
Rayya Osseilly is an Iraqi doctor who cares for other women in the beleaguered city of Qaim. Unsurprisingly, her tale is not a happy one. "I never feel that today is better than yesterday," she says. "It always seems that yesterday was better than today." Looking at the bombed-out remains of the hospital where she works, it is clear she is struggling against the odds.
It is unusual to see at close quarters what is going on for women in cities like Qaim, which last year came under heavy attack from American troops. Access for the western media is severely restricted. Now, though, we have a window on to Qaim thanks to another Iraqi woman, a film-maker who has traveled through the country speaking to widows and children, to doctors and students, in pursuit of the reality of her fellow country-women's lives.
The film-maker, who lives in Baghdad, wants to keep her identity secret because she fears reprisals, so I'll call her Zeina. When I spoke to her by telephone, the first first thing I asked her was why it is that she feels she has to hide her identity, and in her answer she does not distinguish between the government and the insurgents, in the way that we are taught to do here. "I feel the threat from the government and from the sectarian militias," she says. "The danger in Iraq comes from the Americans, from the sectarian militias - and, of course, it also comes from the crime, the gangs, the random kidnappings."
She decided she wanted to make this film because the things she saw every day were not being seen by the outside world. "No one sees what we are going through. All Iraqis are psychologically traumatized by what is happening. I have seen an eight-year old child who has involuntary tremors, whenever she hears an airplane or sees soldiers. I have seen families displaced. I have seen women forced into prostitution because of the poverty of their families."
Zeina was not a supporter of Saddam Hussein's regime. During his rule, she worked as a journalist and a translator of literary criticism. "Politically, before the war, I was not happy," she says. "So many things were not right. We had no freedom of speech, no freedom of expression. But I never imagined the change would be this way, so bad. I never imagined that at all."
From the very start of making her film, this fifty something writer knew she would be taking risks. "We traveled just two or three of us, in an ordinary car. It was dangerous. When we went into Qaim we had to travel across the desert because the Americans had blocked the road. It was dark when we got to Qaim, and we could see a cloud of dust ahead of us, and then there was a flash of light in the dust. We were driving right towards the guns. The driver moved so fast off the road that the car almost overturned. Then another time we were filming the hospital that had been bombed. We went to the roof of the hospital and the Americans began shooting at us. They didn't want to kill us, I think, but they wanted to threaten us, they wanted to show us who was in control."
That footage - of the film-makers taking refuge from gunfire in a ruined hospital - is in the finished film. Indeed, the film that has resulted from Zeina's journey is not a polished product, but more like a filmed blog, a series of telling observations that dip in and out of women's lives. Often you are left frustrated, eager for more context in which to slot these moments. But given that western journalists are so constrained by the security situation that most of the country has simply become invisible to us, you can forgive the film's limitations.
The film is particularly good at capturing the texture of family life lived in such insecurity, and one effective section concentrates on the tale of a young girl, just eight years old, who was picked up by American troops after an attack on the car in which she and her father and other Iraqis were traveling. The troops first took her to a military hospital, but then her family say she was held for three months. They were not informed of her whereabouts and she was interrogated by being asked to identify Iraqi corpses in photographs. Her grandfather eventually tracked her down in Baghdad, and as we see her weeping in his lap we sense her family's frustration at having no accountable authority to whom they can take their anger.
Zeina also shows, in a way that will surely give pause for thought even to those people in Britain who supported the war, how women's lives are being curtailed by the rise of religious fundamentalists who have stepped into the power vacuum. "All the time in the television and the newspapers there is propaganda concerning women. It is really disgusting, it is nothing to do with Islam, but everything to do with taking women back into the home and depriving them of rights."
To show the negative effects of these developments on women, Zeina travels to Basra. It will not come as news to those who have followed developments in southern Iraq that women are being forced to wear the hijab and prevented from living their lives freely. But it brings these developments home when we see young women and their families talking about being sent bullets and death threats because they played sport or did not wear a headscarf. As Zeina emphasizes, this kind of experience is new to most women in Iraq, who enjoyed economic and social freedom before the occupation. "A while ago, I was looking at photographs of my aunt in college in the 60s, wearing pants and sleeveless tops, playing sports in the college yard; and then I looked at the photographs of the women in college today, and they are covered in black from head to toe, their faces also covered."
Zeina says the responsibility for these developments squarely at the feet of the occupation - it has given sectarianism the opportunity to flourish. She simply laughs when I ask her whether she feels grateful for the democracy that America has given Iraq. "Democracy? What democracy? We do not have democracy. This democracy that Bush talks about - it is a completely empty structure, based on sectarian and ethnic interests. How can you have democracy when you are afraid that your life will be threatened, or your husband will be killed if you express yourself freely? It is a bad joke."
Not all women in Iraq are against the occupation - women are as divided as the men, and we in the west have heard Iraqi women speak in support of the US war. But it is hard to resist the force of Zeina's passion as she describes the chaos that the war has brought to Iraq. She longs to go on documenting the situation of women, despite the very narrow limits within which she has to work. "I feel very restricted. I really want to report on the families who are being arrested, on the bodies that are being found, on torture. But either you are a journalist who is working with the Americans - embedded with them - or you jeopardize your life to cover these stories."
Despite the dangers, she is eager to communicate the reality as she sees it, and she would like us to listen: "I do want people in Britain to understand that the occupation of Iraq is not in the interests of Iraq or Britain. Your soldiers are getting killed and nothing is better for the Iraqi people. On the contrary, the situation is going from bad to worse every day, especially for women"
HEY LIAR_K,BEAR AND WASHINGTONEBAYER OR ANY OTHER IRAQ WAR/CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENT SUPPORTER. WHO IS IN CHARGE IN IRAQ? FORTH TIME THIS QUESTION WAS ASKED NO ANSWER FROM IRAQ WAR/BUSH SUPPORTERS.
posted on May 7, 2006 07:58:39 PM newFck off peepa and get your jollies elsewhere, your very posting soils the memory or those brave people.
Washingtonebayer, is the current Iraqi situation too powerful for your brain to deal with?
Face it, your leader made a huge mistake and many innocents lost their lives. Some are gone forever and others will suffer forever. Many lives are in turmoil and we can only hope that by some miracle things will someday improve for them all.
What has already happened is history now and can never be changed. It's reality.
posted on May 7, 2006 08:03:53 PM new
Yesterday Kerry said..........
"Dismissing dissent is not only wrong but dangerous when America's leadership is unwilling to admit mistakes, unwilling to engage in honest discussion and unwilling to hold itself accountable for the consequences of decisions made without genuine disclosure or genuine debate."
"Although no one is being jailed today for speaking out against the war in Iraq, the spirit of intolerance for dissent has risen steadily, and the habit of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic has become the common currency of the politicians currently running our country."
posted on May 8, 2006 12:08:41 PM new
Iraq War Update 5/08/2006
Total 2420 Dead American Troops
Total 17869 Wounded American Troops
05/08/06 Xinhua: Britain to announce troops withdrawal from Iraq
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday that Britain expects to make an announcement about cutting the size of its force in Iraq within the next few weeks.
05/08/06 UPI: Polish minister calls for Iraq withdrawal timetable
Iraqi deployment has become increasingly unpopular among the Bush administration's European allies
posted on May 9, 2006 05:33:52 AM new
Iraq War Update 5/09/2006
Total 2426 Dead American Troops.
05/09/06 BBC: New Iraq cabinet 'nearly ready'
Iraq's Prime Minister-designate Nouri Maliki has said he has nearly completed the task of forming a new government of national unity.
05/09/06 Reuters: Eleven bodies found in Tigris near Baghdad
The bodies of 11 Iraqis, including the headless corpse of a 10-year-old boy, were found dumped in the Tigris...nine of whom were beheaded, were discovered near the Sunni town of Suwayra...Seven of them were wearing Iraqi security forces uniforms.
THE QUESTION IS WHEN WILL IRAQ BE ABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES? AMERICA WANTS ITS TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ NOW.
posted on May 10, 2006 01:27:02 PM new
Iraq War Update for 5/10/2006
Total 2428 Dead American Troops.
Killings in Baghdad Near 1,100 in April
Iraqi President Appeals for End to Bloodshed
By THOMAS WAGNER, AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq (May 10) - President Jalal Talabani urged Iraq's feuding factions Wednesday to unite against surging crime and terrorism, as attacks raged across the country.
Talabani said nearly 1,091 people were killed in Baghdad alone last month, and his office said the figure came from the Baghdad Central Morgue.
However, Dr. Riyadh Abdul Amer of the death registration office of the Ministry of Health, said his office misinterpreted the president's request and gave the figure for all deaths in the Baghdad area for the month of April including natural causes.
According to the health ministry, 762 people were killed as a result of terrorist activity in April: 686 civilians, 54 police and 22 members of the Iraqi army.
On Wednesday, gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Iraqi civilians to work, then planted a bomb aboard the vehicle that exploded when rescue workers arrived. In all, 11 Iraqis were killed and six wounded in the attack near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Elsewhere, 13 Iraqis were killed in other attacks, including four off-duty policemen in Ramadi, officials said Wednesday.
Casualties from a suicide truck bombing in the northern city of Tal Afar on Tuesday night rose to 22 dead and 134 wounded. The U.S. military flew some of the wounded to other cities when the local hospital was overwhelmed.
"We feel shock, dismay and anger over the daily reports of the discovery of unidentified corpses and those of others killed" around the capital, said Talabani, a Kurd.
"If we add this to the number of corpses that are not discovered, or to similar crimes in other provinces, then the total number ... reflects that we are confronting a situation no less dangerous than the results of terrorist acts" such as car bombings and other attacks.
Scores of unidentified bodies turn up around the capital on a daily basis, many bound, tortured and shot execution style in what officials say is an unwavering tide of reprisal sectarian killings.
At least 3,525 Iraqis have been killed in war-related violence this year. These numbers include civilians, government officials, and police and security officials, and are considered only a minimum based on Associated Press reporting.
posted on May 12, 2006 05:09:25 AM new
Iraq War Update 5/12/2006
Total 2436 Dead American Troops
Total 17869 Wounded American Troops
IRAQ WAR COSTING ABOUT 2 BILLION PER WEEK
Funny money on Iraq
The New York Times
President George W. Bush is trying to score unearned points for fiscal rectitude by railing against the Senate's outsize $109 billion supplemental spending package, which includes money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the real scandal is Bush's own preference for financing much of the cost of the Iraq war outside the normal budget process. That is convenient for the administration, which does not have to count the money when it is pretending to balance the budget. But Iraq is not some kind of unexpected emergency. It is a highly predictable cost, now amounting to about $100 billion a year, or just under 20 percent of total military spending.
Moving the war's financing off budget subjects the military's spending requests to less careful congressional scrutiny than they would receive during the usual budget process. More important, this fiscal sleight of hand makes it that much easier for the Pentagon to duck the hard choices it desperately needs to make between costly futuristic weapons and pressing real-world needs.
The Pentagon's latest $460 billion budget request reflects exactly the kinds of distortions that gimmicky cost-shifting produces. There is no serious pressure to economize to pay for those uncounted war costs. So the budget barrels ahead with unrealistic long-term spending projects designed for the Cold War while soldiers go short of armor and adequate reinforcements in Iraq.
Making matters worse, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shunted aside all pleas to expand the size of America's weary ground forces.
Congress would gladly vote the Pentagon every cent it needs to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and rebuild its ground forces so that they are available for other military emergencies. But with so much of the war off budget, as it were, Congress is instead being asked to approve one of the biggest military budgets in American history for projects having little to do with current fighting.
If the Bush administration wants to start winning back some of its credibility, honest budgeting would be one good place to start.
President George W. Bush is trying to score unearned points for fiscal rectitude by railing against the Senate's outsize $109 billion supplemental spending package, which includes money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the real scandal is Bush's own preference for financing much of the cost of the Iraq war outside the normal budget process. That is convenient for the administration, which does not have to count the money when it is pretending to balance the budget. But Iraq is not some kind of unexpected emergency. It is a highly predictable cost, now amounting to about $100 billion a year, or just under 20 percent of total military spending.
Moving the war's financing off budget subjects the military's spending requests to less careful congressional scrutiny than they would receive during the usual budget process. More important, this fiscal sleight of hand makes it that much easier for the Pentagon to duck the hard choices it desperately needs to make between costly futuristic weapons and pressing real-world needs.
The Pentagon's latest $460 billion budget request reflects exactly the kinds of distortions that gimmicky cost-shifting produces. There is no serious pressure to economize to pay for those uncounted war costs. So the budget barrels ahead with unrealistic long-term spending projects designed for the Cold War while soldiers go short of armor and adequate reinforcements in Iraq.
Making matters worse, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shunted aside all pleas to expand the size of America's weary ground forces.
Congress would gladly vote the Pentagon every cent it needs to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and rebuild its ground forces so that they are available for other military emergencies. But with so much of the war off budget, as it were, Congress is instead being asked to approve one of the biggest military budgets in American history for projects having little to do with current fighting.
If the Bush administration wants to start winning back some of its credibility, honest budgeting would be one good place to start.
This topic is 10 pages long: 12345new6new7new8new9new10new
