Cash-Strapped Pentagon Taps (next years) Emergency Fund

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-warcost22sep22.story
THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Cash-Strapped Pentagon Taps Emergency Fund
A $25-billion account was to have been an 'insurance policy' unneeded this year. But insurgents in Iraq changed the equation.
By John Hendren
Times Staff Writer

September 22, 2004

WASHINGTON — A relentless insurgency in Iraq has prompted the Pentagon to begin spending money from a $25-billion emergency fund that Bush administration officials had once said would not be needed this fiscal year, officials said Tuesday.

Unable to tap into regular 2005 funding until the Oct. 1 start of the new fiscal year, the Pentagon has already spent more than $2 billion from the emergency fund.

President Bush requested the emergency funds from Congress in May to pay for a war that is longer and more violent than he and his Pentagon strategists had predicted. The money will help pay for equipment for troops heading to Iraq this fall.

The need to dip into the fund, which also covers the war in Afghanistan, highlights the intensity of an Iraqi insurgency that has virtually wrested control of several cities — most notably the western Sunni Triangle hotbed of Fallouja and the northern city of Samarra — from 135,000 American troops and allied forces still operating in Iraq. <snip>

Congress approved the extra $25 billion as spending for fiscal 2005, but made it available for immediate use.

[UpInArms]

1. out of money so soon?

http://64.177.207.201/static/budget/annual/fy04/topline.htm

'04 budget $379.9 Billion which actually translates into

$379,900,000,000 - that budget did not include the Iraq or Afghanistan adventure fundings

[DulceDecorum]

2. Will they hold a bake-sale?

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29, 2002
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.
"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
<snip>
In his opinion, "With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

[flordehinojos]

3. are the bushes as rich as they say they are? if they use their personal

money in the same squandering fashion that they use our tax dollars ... are their bank accounts full of hot money or just full of hot air?

Well now the Pentagon is out of funds? Why don't the bushes make them a personal loan out of all the generational war profit money they have accumulated?

It only stands to reason. Besides, this time around, they own the Pentagon.

[Moderator]

4. Duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=842912