Saturday, December 18, 2004
The Price Tag of Military Adventurism
The
rising tab for US war effort
Spending may increase by 25 percent next year, which could push
total costs for
By Peter Grier (17 Dec 2004, Christian Science Monitor)
Deployment of extra troops,
plus the need for new armor and other changes to counter insurgent
tactics, may increase war spending by at least 25 percent for
fiscal 2005, say experts. The total cost of the
[...]
Earlier this year most congressional
and administration estimates of fiscal 2005 war costs hovered
in the $60 to $70 billion range.
Now that figure has climbed
higher. The White House plans to ask for upwards of $80 billion
in supplemental appropriations funding for 2005 operations in
That's on top of the $25
billion for end of fiscal 2004 and beginning of 2005 that Congress
has already approved as part of the general military appropriations
bill.
Read full article...
N.B. The $200 billion spent by the Bush administration on
its military conquests is in
addition to the regular defense budget that tops $400
billion per annum.
See the previous post, "The 'Warfare' State and Military Keynesianism,"
for more discussion of these issues.
"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower