War Costs to Date

Total War Funding: $1.64 trillion has been allocated through the Overseas Contingency Operations (war) fund, including $73.3 billion in fiscal year 2015.

Iraq: $817.8 billion has been allocated for the war in Iraq since 2003, including an estimated $1.0 billion in fiscal year 2015.

Afghanistan: $714.8 billion has been allocated for the war in Afghanistan since 2001, including $35.1 billion in fiscal year 2015.

ISIS: $6.2 billion has been allocated to fight the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL), including $5.4 billion in fiscal year 2015.

Pentagon Slush Fund: Overseas Contingency Operations has been used to funnel a conservatively estimated $100.9 billion in non-war spending to the Pentagon to avoid legislated budget caps, including an estimated $30 billion in fiscal year 2015.

I earlier reported that in an interview with Spanish newspapers published October 31st, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be removed from office, and Moon said: “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.” However, it turns out (and I didn’t know this at that time) that he also said the same thing in a separate forum on October 31st: a news conference at the U.N. in Geneva, held jointly with the head of the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross. The present news-report integrates both of those statements from Ban. (This has not been done before, but should be; so, part of this article will repeat from that earlier one.)

The U.N. headlined, “Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary-General) and Peter Maurer (ICRC) on the world’s humanitarian crises – Media Stakeout (Geneva, 31 October 2015).” The 23-minute news-conference video there included him saying (13:50): “I believe that the future of Syria, or the future of the peace talks, … should not be held up by an issue of the future of one man. I believe that it is up to the Syrian people who have to decide the future of President Assad.”

This assertion by the U.N. Secretary General directly contradicts the repeatedly stated position of U.S. President Barack Obama, who insists that Assad must be removed from office and promptly be replaced by someone whom the President of the United States finds to be acceptable to serve as Syria’s leader — that this be done even before the war against ISIS is won. (Is Obama perhaps hoping that ISIS will help Obama to take down Assad? Is he perhaps actually viewing ISIS as being an ally?)

Here is the entire quotation of the similar statement that Mr. Ban made that day to Spanish newspapers and which was quoted at El Pais (as translated by me): “The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. Now, I do not want to interfere in the process of Vienna, but I think it is totally unfair and unreasonable that the fate of a person [diplomatese here for: U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Assad be removed from the Presidency of Syria] to paralyze all this political negotiation. This is not acceptable. It’s not fair. The Syrian government insists that Assad should be part of the transition. Many Western countries oppose the Syrian government’s position. Meanwhile, we lost years. 250,000 people have been killed. There are 13 million refugees or internally displaced. Over 50% of hospitals, schools and infrastructure has been destroyed in Syria. You must not lose more time. This crisis goes beyond Syria, beyond the region. It affects Europe. It is a global crisis.”