Supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr gathered to mark the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to American troops. The statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled on April 9, 2003.
WASHINGTON – President Obama is seeking $83.4 billion for U.S. military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressing for special troop funding that he opposed two years ago when he was a senator and George W. Bush was president.
Obama’s request, including money to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan, would push the costs of the two wars to almost $1 trillion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service. The additional money would cover operations into the fall.
Obama is also requesting $400 million to upgrade security along the U.S.-Mexico border and to combat narcoterrorists.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, acknowledged that Obama has been critical of Bush’s use of similar special legislation to pay for the wars. He said it was needed this time because the money will be required by summer, before Congress is likely to complete its normal appropriations process.
“This will be the last supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan. The process by which this has been funded over the course of the past many years, the president has discussed and will change,” Gibbs said.
The request is likely to win easy approval from the Democratic-controlled Congress, despite frustration among some liberals over the pace of troop withdrawals and Obama’s plans for a large residual force of up to 50,000 troops in Iraq.
The outlines of the request were provided in documents presented at a closed-door congressional briefing.
According to the documents, obtained by The Associated Press, the request would fund an average force level in Iraq of 140,000 U.S. troops. It would also finance Obama’s initiative to boost troop levels in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 from 39,000 to battle al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Obama, who was a harsh critic of the Iraq war as a presidential candidate, opposed an infusion of war funding in 2007 after Bush used a veto to force Congress to remove a withdrawal timeline from that $99 billion measure.
Even as the president requested more funding for the wars, tens of thousands of supporters of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded that U.S. troops leave Iraq in a rally marking the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to U.S. forces.