US approves $547bn military budget

The US has spent over USD 1 trillion on war since 2001.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/185412.html

The Armed Services Committee of the US Senate has increased the Pentagon's 2012 budget by USD15 billion in the face of calls for federal spending reductions.

The amount represents a USD 6 billion panel cut from the Pentagon base request of USD 553 billion, according to a summary released by the panel on Friday.

Despite the USD 6 billion spending cut the legislation faced widespread criticism as the country continues to tackle severe economic hardships.

“Unfortunately, the committee chose to authorize millions of dollars in unnecessary and unrequested pork-barrel projects, and rejected my efforts to stop the out-of-control cost overruns of the F-35 program,” Senator John McCain was quoted by The Hill as saying.

The soaring military spending comes while the Obama administration has had to cut public spending in programs such as Medicare to compensate for the budget deficit.

The United States has spent more than one trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 and the 2012 requested war budget was USD 118 billion.

Polls show that Americans support cuts in US military spending.

US to hike 2011 military budget

The US House of Representatives

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/154638.html


The US House of Representatives has approved a bill that boosts the country's defense budget nearly $160 billion for 2011.

The figure reflects a $31 billion hike in the country's military budget for the 2010 fiscal year, which is reportedly $128 billion. Now the official cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for almost the past decade has surpassed $1.1 trillion.

The bill needs to be passed by the Senate and then signed by US President Barack Obama to take effect, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

According to analysts, however, the bill may undergo some modifications in the Senate.

The United States officially announced that it ended its combat mission in Iraq at the end of August, but carried out several military operations after the date.

Following the announcement, Washington withdrew most of its troops from the Iraqi soil after seven years of military presence in the country, leaving some 50,000 American soldiers for what it has described as "training and advising" purposes.



In 2006, a study conducted by the British medical journal The Lancet, revealed that 655,000 Iraqis lost their lives in the US-led war. The Opinion Research Business (ORB)'s study, however, put the number of post-invasion deaths at over 1 million.



As of February 2010, the Pentagon has spent nearly $704 billion in Iraq, based on estimates of current expenditure rates that range from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimate of $2 billion per week to the $12-billion-a-month figure estimated by economists.



Based on US military official figures, 4,404 US soldiers have been killed and 31,827 others wounded in action in war-torn Iraq as of May 28, 2010. Total coalition military deaths are put at 4,568 bodies.



The war in Afghanistan has also resulted in over 2,100 coalition casualties, including over 1,400 American deaths. The US currently has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan. The total number of coalition forces in the country reaches 150,000.



The monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up.



Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan, compared with $5.5 billion spent in Iraq. As recently as fiscal year 2008, the US military spending in Iraq was three times higher than in Afghanistan. The Iraq war expenditure in 2009 was twice as costly as the Afghan war.

Obama unveils record $708 bn military budget

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=117629&sectionid=3510203


US President Barack Obama seeks a record $708 billion military spending for fiscal year 2011 despite earlier vows to trim Pentagon's 'wasteful' weapons programs.

Obama is proposing in his 3.8 trillion dollar budget plan a hike in military funding, including the boosting of funds for nuclear weapons and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 3.4 percent increase in Pentagon's base budget by Obama's White House accounts for the allocation of $549 billion in addition to earmarking another $159 billion to finance US military missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The US president's spending freeze on different areas of the budget, supposedly to help ease the pressure of a hefty 1.6 trillion budget deficit, does not include defense expenditures.

Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has welcomed the boosting of the military budget and said that the funding scheme has been drawn up according to "a dose of realism" about the threats and required funds.

He reiterated his remarks on the necessity of military preparations to encounter asymmetric warfare and 'overseas enemies' and added, "The department's leadership now recognizes that we must prepare for a much broader range of security challenges on the horizon."

Despite Pentagon's scrapping of a number of military proposals, the department will focus more on the development of unmanned planes, helicopters, electronic warfare capabilities and cyberspace measures, Reuters reported.