Saturday, March 27, 2010
Oh No! Not another supplemental for the Kabul Quagmire.
Despite the promise to avoid doing so, the Obama administration is also paying for the KQ with supplemental budget appropriations. Included in the supplemental are funds for making a silk purse out of a sows ear, also known as training Afghan security forces.
The Pentagon wants $33 billion in additional funding to pay for the war in Afghanistan this year and train the Afghan military, but members of Congress want to make sure they’re not writing a blank check.So far most of the money used to train Afghan security has been poured down a rat hole. Better to spend our money pulling out of the country and let the chips fall where they may.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared before Senate appropriators to defend the war supplemental, which is on top of the $708 billion baseline budget submitted to Congress in February.
Most of the war supplemental – a separate account used to pay for war costs – will pay for Afghanistan operations. Of that, $2.6 billion is to train the Afghan national security force, seen as a long-term endeavor that Congress worries could become a burden over time.
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