Afghanistan Weekly Reader: $97 billion for another year of war
The defense budget is driving the news this week. The president’s request for fiscal year 2013, unveiled Monday, includes $89 billion in war costs for the Department of Defense, plus $8 billion for State – a total of $97 billion. Problems with this number are already starting to pop up. Funding for inefficient and unsustainable infrastructure projects continues in the 2013 request, as does the Pentagon’s habit of hiding non-war costs in the war budget.
Defense Secretary Panetta expects an agreement on the US presence in Afghanistan in the next few weeks. That may help clear up some questions about future war costs. But if this year’s war budget is any indication, war spending won’t be going down anytime soon.
From ASG
2/14/12
Capping War Costs at Only $450 Billion
Afghanistan Study Group by Mary Kaszynski
The president’s budget proposes a $450 billion cap on war spending over the next nine years. This is a step in the right direction, but the proposed cap is far too high, leaving plenty of room for unnecessary spending.
ARTICLES
2/10/12
Defense budget magic
CNN by Libby Lewis
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta hasn’t revealed much so far about his department’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year. But he has offered a peek at some numbers, like this one: $88.4 billion for war funding…The war is expensive, true, but some defense budget experts say there may be also be some defense budget magic going on. It’s a magic made possible by two things.
2/12/12
Risks of Afghan War Shift From Soldiers to Contractors
New York Times by Rod Norlund
Even dying is being outsourced here.
This is a war where traditional military jobs, from mess hall cooks to base guards and convoy drivers, have increasingly been shifted to the private sector. Many American generals and diplomats have private contractors for their personal bodyguards. And along with the risks have come the consequences: More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in Afghanistan last year for the first time during the war.
2/15/12
Pentagon hides $3 billion in budget accounting maneuver
Foreign Policy by Josh Rogin
The Pentagon’s new budget request moves $3 billion of military pay and benefits out of the base budget into the war budget in an accounting maneuver experts and congressional staffers say is meant to get around legally mandated budget caps and bolster the administration’s plan to cut the size of the Army and Marines.
OPINION
2/14/12
450 Bases and It’s Not Over Yet
TomDispatch by Nick Turse
Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible. U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012.
