The White House house has now asked Congress to grant a funding request for $87.6bn, some $67bn of which will go straight to the US ‘War Department’. For the most part, the massive bill is directly related to “urgent needs” regarding the war in Iran.
The news comes after the US Senate passed its symbolic War Powers Resolution on 23 June. Four Republicans supported the resolution, which nominally forbids Trump from continuing hostilities against Iran without congressional approval. However, it doesn’t carry the weight of law.
Likewise, it also follows over a week after both Trump and Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkianset signed the Islamabad Memorandum. The framework sets out a putative path to winding down the US’ war on Iran. The agreement has been widely reported as Trump’s surrender.
That surrender even included the US unfreezing Iranian assets and waiving export sanctions. Meanwhile, the two countries haven’t agreed a course for Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The other ‘unconditional surrender’
However, even these dire public humiliations haven’t stopped Trump claiming that the memorandum represented Iran’s “unconditional surrender”. Of course, even Trump can’t keep that particular lie straight, as he also recently claimed:
I have Iran on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall
Appearing before the House Armed Services committee on May 12, Jules Hurst — the Pentagon’s acting comptroller — claimed that the Iran war had cost $29bn. Fortune reported that:
Despite the six weeks that have passed, the Pentagon referred Fortune back to Hurst’s testimony when asked for an updated estimate this week.
This is, of course, ridiculous. The US spent $1bn on the first day of its assault alone, and continued spending at that rate for some time. As such, accounting for 50,000 US troops deployed, Harvard Kennedy School federal budget expert Linda Bilmes calculated a likely total of around $200bn.
The fact that the Pentagon requested $67bn this week only serves to highlight its obvious lie. Why on earth would the War Department need such a sum to plough into a war that it definitely already won, if it only spent $29bn to win it?
Iran War: Operation Epic Failure
Given these obvious and outright lies, and the war’s increasing unpopularity with both the US public (and even Republican lawmakers), it’s unsurprising that the Pentagon will have a struggle securing its latest request.
As such, the White House Office of Management and Budget threw its weight behind the Pentagon on 24 June. In a letter to Mike Johnson, speaker for the House of Representatives, it wrote that:
Most of this request will address urgent needs related to Operation Epic Fury (OEF)
‘Epic Fury’ is the characteristically childish US codename for its illegal assault on Iran. The latest budget request includes:
- $21bn for munitions (ostensibly to “rebuild stocks”),
- $17.3bn for operational costs,
- $12.1bn for classified programs,
- $300m for security at US embassies and outposts in Southeast Asia
Rolled in with those eye-watering totals are a further $11bn for farmers and $1.4bn in aid for an Ebola outbreak in Central Africa.
Polling a new low
Trump’s illegal assault on Iran failed, and it’s cost him far more than $200 billion. On 24 June, Reutersreported that:
Just one in four Americans [23%] believes President Donald Trump’s war with Iran was worth its costs and a majority [63%] worry that a truce with Tehran is unlikely to last, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The five-day poll, which closed on Monday, also showed the war weighing heavily on Trump’s popularity, with his approval rating dropping to 34%, a return to the lowest level of the Republican’s second term that was last touched in an April survey.
Meanwhile, the November midterm elections are fast approaching. The Republican majority in both houses is narrow at best, and Trump’s party could easily lose control of Congress.
Of course, the threat of losing power will only make a man like Trump more dangerous — and that’s bad news the world over.
Featured image via the Canary
By Grace
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