WASHINGTON (AFP) – The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will allow for a reduced US defense budget in 2012 but the war in Afghanistan still costs the United States close to 300 million dollars a day.
Under the Pentagon’s proposed budget, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will drop to $117.8 billion for fiscal year 2012, a reduction of 41.5 billion from the previous year.
As the US war effort winds down in Iraq, the budget sets aside $10.6 billion for “Operation New Dawn,” with the remaining 50,000 US troops there due to withdraw by the end of 2011.
Spending for the Afghan mission calls for $107.3 billion, down slightly from the last budget, which requested $113.5 billion.
President Barack Obama has vowed to start a withdrawal in July of the roughly 97,000 troops now in Afghanistan.
The budget released Monday offered no insight into the scale of the planned drawdown, with the Pentagon’s budget document assuming an average of 98,250 troops on the ground by the end of 2012.
Gates said the Pentagon had “decided to budget conservatively” as it was too soon to predict how many troops would be withdrawn after July.
“But that’s not to say that we will have 98,000 troops at the end of FY 2012. In fact it’s a lead pipe cinch we won’t.”
The budget for Afghanistan and Iraq includes $79.2 billion for operations, $10.1 billion to counter the threat posed by homemade bombs — the main killer of NATO-led troops in the war.
Some $11.9 billion is devoted to repairing and replacing equipment lost or damaged and $12.8 billion for training and arming Afghan security forces, who are supposed to gradually take over security duties between now and 2015.
By October, the United States and NATO plans to expand the Afghan army to 172,000 soldiers and the police to 134,000 police.
Three hundred million dollars a day for the Afghanistan war, and you ask yourself why is this nation broke and is rapidly being down graded to a third world country status. Ten years of futile fighting a no win bogus war in a country that Russia couldn’t beat and yet we pay no attention to their mistakes and continue spending trillions of dollars and American lives just for corporate and banking interests. There are more wars planned that are on the horizon that no republican or democrat can prevent, all they can do is play the never ending “blame game” and the public eats it up.
Our country is in a political abyss that no one or group can save regardless what names and influence they carry on their sleeves. Nation after nation is falling to the world bankers and their brown shirt thugs whose predecessors had excellent training in Nazi Germany to the present. Everyday is doomsday as long as Obama and his treason ridden traitor supporters remain in office. Got freedom?
As long as the U.S. economy is based on a debt based money system and government continues to throw away money on defense spending on foreign wars, there will be no economic recovery. All troops should be pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan and a national defense force established to secure the U.S. borders. The U.S. spends billions of dollars in foreign aid every year to these dictatorships that protect our interest. Our currency and economy is being destroyed by OPEC. The Saudi Royal Family is the riches people on earth and very little of their wealth trickles down to the majority of their people. One way to break OPEC is to conduct international trade and balance of payments with barter echange contracts. A bushel of wheat for a barrel of oil. Let the rag heads grow crops in the dessert sands and drink their oil. The U.S. government needs to break away from international finance instead of baseing their money on the bankers gold, by abolishing the Federal Reserve and restoring monetary authority to the U.S. treasury to create and extinguish honest debt free money. The U.S. government can issue Labor Treasury Certificates for work performed, services rendered, and goods produced (not the international bankers) International trade and balanace of payments could be conducted with barter exchange contracts.