Washington, October 07: The US Senate has passed a massive $636 billion defense bill for fiscal year 2010, as disparities increase in Washington over the unpopular war in Afghanistan.
Almost $130 billion of the defense spending bill is to be assigned to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The measure will bring the total tab for the US-led wars in the two volatile countries to more than $1 trillion.
However, the bill, passed 93-7 votes, does not allocate funds for the transfer of terror suspects currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in leased Cuban territories.
The sum is $3.9 billion less than the amount requested by President Barack Obama’s administration.
Analysts predict that Obama’s Iraq and Afghanistan funding request will not last the entire 2010 budget year, which began October 1, and that additional money will be needed next spring.
Obama is currently formulating a new strategy for the deteriorating mission in Afghanistan, before taking a final decision on whether to dispatch another 40,000 troops, as requested by his generals.
On Tuesday, Obama was pressed by US Republican Congressmen to heed his top generals’ advice over the approach to the Afghan conflict.
Obama this winter approved 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan, which would bring the total number of US forces there to 68,000 by the end of the year.
In recent months, insurgency has skyrocketed in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the Taliban has stepped up attacks against US and NATO occupation troops with roadside bombs and ambushes.
Nearly 400 Western troops have been killed in the fighting in 2009 alone, making it the deadliest year of the war since the beginning of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
At the same time, Afghan civilian casualties have risen to 1,500 — many killed in US air raids — in the first 9 months of the year, resulting in greater animosity toward the occupiers.
The mounting number of Western soldiers coming home in body bags has sent support for the war plummeting in Europe, Canada, and the United States.
Canada and several European countries seem to oppose further commitments to the mission in Afghanistan.
—–Agencies