A request for an additional $33 billion this year to cover the cost of fighting the counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq is expected to accompany the Pentagon’s forthcoming spending proposal for Fiscal 2011. So reported the Associated Press Wednesday (via the Washington Post), citing Administration officials who said these extra funds would go mostly toward the expansion of operations in Afghanistan, where the US is adding an additional 30,000 troops by mid-year. And according to AP, the Fiscal 2011 defense plan, due to Congress in early February, may eclipse $700 billion, a first.
The U.S. thwarted a drone attack on U.S. forces at Al Asad air base in western Iraq on April 22, marking the first time that American troops have been targeted since February, U.S. officials said. “We can confirm it was an attack on Al Asad,” a defense official told Air & Space…