Another $70 billion sought for U.S. wars

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that it will ask Congress to approve $70 billion in additional spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2006, bringing the overall costs of those conflicts to nearly $400 billion by the end of the budget year in September.

In addition, President Bush will request a place-holding $50 billion for the wars in the new 2007 spending plan that the White House will unveil Monday.

But, like the $50 billion that the White House initially included for war in this year's budget, the Office of Management and Budget maintains that the real cost for 2007, dictated by "events on the ground," is impossible to forecast.

The request for more money came on a day when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned against underestimating the global terrorist threat. "The enemy — while weakened and under great pressure — is still capable of global reach, still possesses the determination to kill more Americans, and is still trying to do so with increasingly powerful weapons," Rumsfeld said at the National Press Club in Washington.

Currently, the Defense Department maintains it is spending about $4.5 billion a month on the conflict in Iraq, or about $100,000 per minute. Current spending in Afghanistan is about $800 million a month, or about $18,000 per minute.

The cost of the war in Iraq is clearly surpassing anyone's early estimates, including those of the administration. Bush aide Lawrence Lindsey suggested in 2002 that a war in Iraq could cost as much as $200 billion, an estimate considered so high — and so impolitic — it helped lead to his ouster from the administration.

Thursday's announcement of a request for a supplemental $70 billion means the wars will cost about $120 billion for the 2006 budget year, the same as their cost in fiscal 2005.

"We think we will again need a $50 billion bridge (for '07), so we are identifying that," said Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a conference call with reporters. "It is a bridge. It is not meant to be an estimate of what the '07 fiscal year costs will be. . . . That will be determined by events on the ground."

In addition to asking for war funding, the Bush administration will request $18 billion for rebuilding the Gulf Coast devastated by hurricane Katrina.