Oops, he did it again.

Bush's budget doesn't include money for Iraq and Afghanistan

American military budgets have increased steadily for the past six years. The Bush administration plans for military spending to grow $20 billion a year over the next five years. The current defense-budget proposal projects that spending will reach $487.7 billion by 2009.

The 2005 proposal represents 3.6 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product, according to Pentagon estimates. Defense spending is up from 2.9 percent of GDP in fiscal year 2000, but down from 8.9 percent during 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, according to Pentagon figures. Spending is also down from 6 percent of GDP during the military buildup of the Reagan administration, according to Pentagon figures.

Noticeably absent from next year's request is money for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. White House budget director Joshua Bolten estimated that another $50 billion would be needed to cover those costs next year. The White House expects to cover the war costs with supplemental funds after next fall's elections.

The budget sets aside a 3.5 percent pay hike for troops and $74.9 billion in new weapons. Another $68.9 billion is earmarked for research on futuristic projects including a laser satellite system, space-based radar and cruise missile defense.

Weapons procurement is weighted heavily in favor of new planes and other aircraft, including $11 billion for the controversial F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, all of which have had cost overruns in recent years. The Osprey had a series of fatal crashes and almost was scrapped.

Unmanned aircraft such as the Predator, which was used successfully in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, would receive nearly $2 billion in funding, a 32 percent increase over last year. The Pentagon also plans to spend $1.6 billion on satellite and laser-guided bombs, Tomahawk missiles and other precision munitions, all of which have been used heavily in combat operations since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

See link above for more.

So, Bushy boy is going to ask for money after the fall elections? No, he would never politicize defense. Never. And what is all this bs money for creme de la creme pentagon pet projects while the rest of us get squat.

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Here's a good example of how an examination of 'intelligence failures' ought to be conducted. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Bush's inquiry into Iraq intelligence must include Cheney, Pentagon

By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq will never be known unless the inquiry proposed by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S officials said Monday.

The officials said they feared that Bush, gearing up his fight for re-election, would try to limit the inquiry?s scope to the CIA and other agencies, and ignore the key role the administration?s own internal intelligence efforts played in making the case for war.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, didn?t dispute that the CIA failed to accurately assess the state of Iraq?s weapons programs. But they said that the intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions.

Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaida and his illicit arms programs that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other agencies, the officials said. ?There were more agencies than CIA providing intelligence . . . that are worth scrutiny, including the (Pentagon?s now-disbanded) Office of Special Plans and the office of the vice president,? said a former senior military official who was involved in planning the Iraq invasion.

Some of the disputed findings were presented as facts to Americans as Bush drummed up his case for war.

Those findings included charges of cooperation between Saddam and al Qaida, Cheney?s assertion that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program and would ?soon? have a nuclear bomb, and Bush?s contention in his 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam was seeking nuclear bomb-making material from Africa. Senior officials on Monday revealed new details of how Cheney?s office pressed Secretary of State Colin Powell to use large amounts of disputed intelligence in a February 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council laying out the U.S. case for an invasion.

See link above for more.

Any really good probe should not end at at Cheney's Desk. It should include Bush as well.

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The NYT makes trots out the obvious headline: "Bush Bets America Agrees With His Fiscal Priorities" I'll take that bet The whole thing about Bush being an MBA.. That was some sort of sick joke, right?

And lastly, also from the Gray Lady:

Near-Sighted Deficit Plan Ignores Problems Down the Road, Skeptics Say

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

Published: February 3, 2004

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 ? In offering a plan to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009, President Bush ignored more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts and spending commitments that come due shortly afterward.

Mr. Bush is projecting that the deficit will hit a record $521 billion this year, then decline to about $237 billion over the next five years.

But that estimate excludes most of the cost of making his tax cuts permanent, most of the costs of the Medicare prescription bill and all of the costs of keeping American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond this year.

Budget analysts said Monday that the five-year goal would itself be difficult to achieve. The cost of maintaining American military forces in Iraq could total $50 billion in 2005 alone, even if the number of troops there declines by one-third.

But by laying out a 5-year plan rather than a 10-year one, as Mr. Bush did until deficits began to soar, the administration has pushed many of the biggest fiscal challenges outside its budgetary "window."

All told, Mr. Bush has proposed more than $1.1 trillion in additional tax cuts over the next decade. The biggest proposal is a permanent extension of most of the tax cuts he has pushed through Congress in the last three years.

Of that $1.1 trillion, only about $175 billion would occur between now and 2009. The rest, nearly $900 billion, would not take effect until the end of this decade ? after the end of a second Bush term.

The five-year deficit-reduction goal also excludes soaring costs of paying for prescription drugs under the new Medicare law. The administration now estimates those costs will total more than $530 billion over 10 years, but two-thirds would come due in the second 5 years.

"If you look at fiscal policy, it looks like an exploding cigar," said Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that lobbies for greater budgetary discipline. "Focusing on just the next five years ignores all the exploding costs in the out years. It is much too narrow a focus."

The exloding cigar crack is a gem. What do you expext when you have a gaggle of clowns running the show?

I wonder what happened to that whole pre and post election bit about restoring honor and dignity to the office of President? Odd the way your fantasies often get trumped by cold reality.

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That's all for today. I think I'm going to color key the various categories of entries. Sometime.