$80 Billion For War In '05

[David]

AP


The Bush administration plans to announce Tuesday it will request about $80 billion more for this year's costs of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, congressional aides said Monday.

The request would push the total provided so far for those wars and for U.S. efforts against terrorism elsewhere in the world to more than $280 billion since the first money were provided shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The package will not formally be sent to Congress until after President Bush introduces his 2006 budget on Feb. 7. But the aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said White House budget chief Joshua Bolten or other administration officials would describe the spending request publicly Tuesday.

Until now, the White House had not been expected to reveal details of the war package until after the budget's release.

In other developments:


Iraqi security forces have arrested the "most lethal" top lieutenant of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The lieutenant, Sami Mohammed Ali Said al-Jaaf, also known as Abu Omar al-Kurdi is alleged to be behind 75 percent of the car bombings in Baghdad since the U.S.-led invasion, the prime minister's office said Monday.


A suicide driver detonated a car bomb at a guard post outside the Iraqi prime minister's party headquarters in Baghdad Monday, injuring at least 10 people. Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the attack.


A bomb blast Monday rocked a Baghdad school -- one of the few polling stations that has been publicly identified. Damage was light but the message to voters was clear.


Three U.S. soldiers were wounded Sunday in a mortar attack in Samarra north of Baghdad, the U.S. command said. One of the soldiers was being evacuated to a U.S. military hospital in Germany with serious injuries.


Gunmen firing from a speeding car shot dead an Iraqi police lieutenant as he was returning home Sunday night in Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.


North of the capital, the deputy governor of Iraq's Diyala province, Ghassan al-Khadran, escaped an assassination attempt Monday morning as a roadside bomb struck his car.


Iraq has resumed shipping oil from its southern terminals after a weekend stoppage caused by a power failure and strong winds, a shipping agent in the country said Monday.


Eight Chinese workers freed by Iraqi kidnappers were scheduled to fly to Jordan then head home to China on Tuesday, said a Chinese diplomat in the Jordanian capital. The eight are to arrive in Jordan on Monday, the diplomat added, speaking on condition of anonymity. Iraqi insurgents kidnapped the eight construction workers this month as they were traveling toward Jordan to return home.

Until now, the White House had not been expected to reveal details of the war package until after the budget's release.

The decision to release details of the $80 billion war budget requestion comes comes after congressional officials argued to the administration that withholding the war costs from Bush's budget would open the budget to criticism that it was an unrealistic document. Last year, the spending plan omitted war expenditures and received just that critique.

Adding additional pressure, the Congressional Budget Office planned to release a semi-annual report on the budget Tuesday that was expected to include a projection of war costs. Last September, the nonpartisan budget office projected the 10-year costs of the wars at $1.4 trillion at current levels of operations, and $1 trillion if the wars were gradually phased down.

Aides said about three-fourths of the $80 billion was expected to be for the Army, which is bearing the brunt of the fighting in Iraq. It also was expected to include money for building a U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which has been estimated to cost $1.5 billion.

One aide said the request will also include funds to help the new Afghan government combat drug-trafficking. It might also have money to help two new leaders the U.S. hopes will be allies, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko.

The aides said the package Bush eventually submits to Congress will also include money to help Indian Ocean countries hit by the devastating December tsunami.

[sn-e3]

This War is getting alittle costly. How much does it cost to build a new nation and how come we are paying for it.