Military Fights to Keep Tanks and Guns Working in Iraq

[cal04]

Military Fights to Keep Tanks and Guns Working in Iraq
War Bill Escalates With Unforeseen Costs of Fixing or Replacing Materiel


With the expected passage this spring of the largest emergency spending bill in history, annual war expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat. The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise, from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found. Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars. The invasion's "shock and awe" of high-tech laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft has long faded, but the costs of even those early months are just coming into view as the military confronts equipment repair and rebuilding costs it has avoided and procurement costs it never expected.

"We did not predict early on that we would have the number of electronic jammers that we've got. We did not predict we'd have as many armored vehicles that we have, nor did we have a good prediction about what our battle losses would be," Army Chief of Staff Peter J. Schoomaker recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Steven M. Kosiak, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments' director of budget studies, said, "If you look at the earlier estimates of anticipated costs, this war is a lot more expensive than it should be, based on past conflicts."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902594.html

[bemildred]

1. People that go to war thinking they know what is going to happen

are fools.

[lvx35]

2. There's the culture of corruption.

10,000 million dollars a month and the troops can't keep their guns working. But its okay, we've got to keep those starving defense contracters, mercenaries and the like alive. The troops are secondary. :sarcasm:

[Tom Joad]

3. I hope the US tanks and guns fall apart. eom