Pentagon seeks $150B emergency funding

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- The Pentagon is preparing to ask the new Democratic Congress for as much as $150 billion in emergency war spending, the Los Angeles Times said Wednesday.

The request for supplemental funding is the largest ever since they began after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has soared since an Oct. 25 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in which he said the military services could include costs associated with operations that are part of the larger war on terrorism.

Analysts told the Times the Army is requesting about $80 billion in the upcoming supplemental although Army officials would not confirmed the figure.

Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Morshe Araujo said service has requested about $33 billion in supplemental funding, up from $17.4 billion before the England memo.

"The England memo basically said, 'Let her rip,'" said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project and a former congressional budget aide. "Anything goes, as long as you can put it under the pretext of not only Iraq or Afghanistan, but the global war on terror."