When he makes his long-term budget proposal this week, the President must include choices about all the money that has been draining into the Middle East Money Pit for the past decade.
In Baghdad last week, Robert Gates was reassuring troops they would be paid, even as he told them they may be staying longer than scheduled.
“If folks here are going to want us to have a presence,” the Defense Secretary says, “we’re going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning.”
While politicians fought the Battle of Washington over a pittance for abortion funding and other social issues, the American flow of money into the Middle East keeps going on and on.
More than $1.1 trillion after the Bush Administration promised that Iraq oil would pay for its reconstruction, U. S. money is still pouring in as foreign companies vie to extract profits from the nation’s natural resources.
Yet, in all the posturing over a fraction of budget deficits, not a word is heard to question huge American expenditures for what is becoming more and more an illusory and unpopular War on Terror…
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