IRIB
An astronomical US defense budget, the highest in the past six years, has been passed by the US Senate, which indicates the warlike intentions of Washington.
According to the Senate legislation the budget of the US defense department in 2008 has been put at US$648 billion. Of the said amount, US$150 billions has been allocated to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US regime intends to raise this figure to US$192 billion by asking for US$42 billion of additional budget.
The approval of such huge budgets will draw massive protests. Although most Senate Democrats have voted in favor of the Pentagon-proposed budget, at the same time this issue will trigger opposition from critics of the government.
When US President George W. Bush came to power in 2001 through election fraud he vowed to increase the defense budget of the country in five years to US$500 billion. But now has added close to US$140 billion to his previously predicted budget.
The allocation of such a huge bulk of budget to military and security affairs comes while the US Federal regime is suffering from US$500-billion budget deficit. Through adopting tax cut and increasing ongoing costs in defense field Bush has disrupted budget balance in the past couple of years. As a result the growing US debts have reached an unprecedented US$10 trillion.
The Iraq war fund receives the biggest share of the total US defense budget. In view of the 2008 budget the Iraq war has cost the American taxpayers over US$700 billion. This is while according to the US officials four and a half years of the US occupation of Iraq has not brought any desirable outcome for the Bush regime. The case is also true in the so-called war on terrorism. In other words, despite the rising costs of war on terror the level of security threats has not reduced.
|
