Obama seeks $83bn more for US wars

The US president has asked congress for $83.4bn for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.Barack Obama said 95 per cent of the money he was requesting would go to support US military operations in Iraq and the effort to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."The Taliban is resurgent and al-Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border," Obama told Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, in a letter released by the White House.The special measure also includes $3.6bn for the Afghanistan National Army.Obama is also requesting $350m in new funding to increase security along the US-Mexico border and to combat drug gangs, and another $400m in counter-insurgency aid to Pakistan.The US president's request, which includes money to send thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan, would push the cost of the two wars to almost $1 trillion since the September 11, 2001 attacks against the US, according to the Congressional Research Service.However, the White House acknowledged that Obama had been critical of similar legislation used by the administration of George Bush, his predecessor, to fund the wars.