Pentagon wants 127 bln dlrs more for Iraq, Afghanistan: US senator

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - The Pentagon plans to ask Congress for an additional 127 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007, a top Senate Democrat's office said.

The funding request would be in addition to the 70 billion dollars already written into the 2007 budget for US military operations there.

Senator Kent Conrad, the incoming head of the Senate budget committee, "heard from very reliable Republican sources that the next supplemental (budget request) would be 127 billion dollars and rising," his spokesman Chris Thorne told AFP.

Thorne confirmed the information originally reported by USA Today on Friday. The daily also cited another member of Congress, Democratic Representative Jim Cooper (news, bio, voting record), who said the Pentagon would seek as much as 160 billion dollars.

In late September, the US Congress approved the Defense Department budget for the 2007 fiscal year, which began in October, raising it to 447.6 billion dollars, with 70 billion earmarked specifically for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 70 billion dollars brought to more than 500 billion dollars the cost of foreign operations in the US "war on terror" launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States -- two-thirds of which has been used in Iraq.

According to USA Today, if Congress grants the additional funding of between 127 billion and 160 billion dollars, it would make the war on terror more expensive than the entire Vietnam War, which cost 536 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation.