[Fresh Ink] Obama wants $33 billion more for wars

[Richard Menec]

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/34831989/ns/politics-white_house/

Associated Press                        Jan. 12, 2010

Obama wants $33 billion more for wars

Comes on top of record $708 billion request for next year

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration plans to ask Congress for an 
additional $33 billion to fight unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on 
top of a record request for $708 billion for the Defense Department next 
year, The Associated Press has learned.

The administration also plans to tell Congress next month that its central 
military objectives for the next four years will include winning the current 
wars while preventing new ones, and its core missions will include both 
counterinsurgency and counterterror operations.

The administration's Quadrennial Defense Review, the main articulation of 
U.S. military doctrine, is due in Congress on Feb. 1. Top military 
commanders were briefed on the document at the Pentagon on Monday and 
Tuesday. They also received a preview of the administration's budget plans 
through 2015.

The four-year review outlines six crucial mission areas and spells out 
capabilities and goals the Pentagon wants to develop. The pilotless drones 
used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a 
priority, with a goal of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and 
expansion of Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.

The extra $33 billion in 2010 would go mostly toward expansion of the war in 
Afghanistan. Obama ordered an extra 30,000 troops for that war as part of an 
overhaul of the war strategy late last year.

The request for that additional funding will be sent to Congress at the same 
time as the record spending request for next year, making financing the war 
an especially difficult pill for some of Obama's Democratic allies to 
swallow.

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