On Friday, December 22nd, Reuters published an article titled “Lawmakers Press Bush to Put War Costs in Budget” that stated; “Three lawmakers – one Republican and two Democrats – wrote to Bush on Thursday telling him that the emergency bills had created an ‘ever expanding shadow budget’ that was obscuring Congress’s oversight process and skewing budget deficit projections.”

These were three heavyweight congressmen on budget committees; Senator Judd Gregg, current chairman of the Senate Budget Committee; Senator Kent Conrad, incoming chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Representative John Spratt, incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee.

These three are not complaining about the $70 billion Congress recently authorized for Iraq this year, fiscal 2007, an amount almost equal to the $78.2 billion they stole from Social Security in fiscal 2006, but they are complaining about the “way” it’s done. In this regard, the word “shadow” is hardly appropriate.

As President and Commander-In-Chief, Bush doesn’t need the approval of Congress to borrow more money. The $615.7 billion increase to the national debt in fiscal 2006 and one day should make it obvious to everyone that the costs of our military operations are beyond accountability.

The only thing “shadowy” about it is that we don’t know specifically where this money went and even the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says they can’t keep track of it. It’s more than an accounting problem or trick.

About the only thing we do know is that the government deals in large lumps of money to support our military Empire. We know that it includes the nearly half trillion budget the Pentagon needs to add to the roughly $350 billion already spent to invade and occupy Iraq for four years running, but we know little about the costs of caring for our dead and wounded plus the more than one hundred thousand private U.S. contractors (not including their subcontractors) over there on “no bid” contracts backing up our troops and building another 55 military bases in Iraq. Add that to the 734 bases we are already operating in other countries of the world that is part of the Pentagon’s annual budget.

On top of all that, we are building a “surge” of more troops to be sent to Iraq, plans to possibly recruit foreign enlistees, and the temptation to bomb or follow Israel in an invasion of Syria and Iran.

When Bush asks Congress for an additional $100 billion for “the war,” bringing it to the original $170 billion the Pentagon claimed to need in additional or “emergency” spending, he’s asking for money to be taken from tax receipts currently meant for domestic spending in one annual budget or another.  He’s asking that Congress short education, agriculture, health, and other domestic budgets. Otherwise, he would simply borrow the additional money and run up the national debt even further.

Even worse, it is questionable whether accountability at this late date even allows for corrective action. Our lawmakers as well as the general public may have ignored the huge increases to our national debt far too long, but we cannot expect our creditors to do the same.