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Gates seeks more money for Iraq, Afghanistan wars

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has asked Congress for nearly US$190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, the biggest funding request yet in the six-year-old "war on terror."

Heckled by anti-war protesters, Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday that the funding was needed to cover the cost of keeping extra troops in Iraq through July and to provide better armored vehicles to them.

The latest request marks a sharp increase over the US$141.7 billion that the administration requested for next year at the start of the surge in February.

"The second adjustment to be submitted by the president seeks approximately 42 billion, bringing the total FY [fiscal year] '08 DOD [Department of Defense] request to nearly 190 billion," Gates said.

Senator Diane Feinstein, a Democrat, noted the sharp rise in war costs, ticking off yearly increases in war spending from US$34 billion in 2002 to US$171 billion this year.

"If you go back and look at the supplementals it has been a constant progression upwards," she said.

Gates said US$6 billion of the additional funding would go to maintain additional US "surge" forces in Iraq through mid-July.

Gates said the new funding request "takes into account the president's announced intention to redeploy five Army combat brigade combat teams by next summer."

Defense officials said the war funding being sought now does not anticipate force reductions beyond July even though Gates has expressed hopes they can be drawn down to 10 brigades by the end of the year, or about 100,000 troops.

The new funding request includes US$11 billion to field 7,000 mine resistant armored vehicles known as MRAPs on top of 8,000 that already have been funded or requested, Gates said. He has made MRAPs the top procurement priority since learning that not a single US troop has been killed by a roadside bomb in one.
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