Pentagon says has no money for Middle East buildup, forced to reassess US operations

The US military is lacking the funds needed for the Middle East buildup and involvement in the Israeli war on Gaza, the Pentagon has revealed, as the whole world is reacting to US participation in the Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.

Politico reported that the Pentagon has no money to pay for the US military buildup in the Middle East to back the Israeli regime after the Israeli forces launched a genocidal campaign on the people of the Gaza Strip last month.

“We’re taking it out of hide,” said Chris Sherwood, a Pentagon spokesman, adding that “Current events have revised some of the operational assumptions used to develop the FY 2024 President’s Budget request. Specifically, neither the base budget request nor the FY 2024 supplemental request included funding for US operations related to Israel."

The buildup in the Middle East — which has included extending the deployment of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group operating off the coast of Israel — has therefore forced the military departments and US Central Command to reassess the requirements for current and future operations based on the developing conflict, he said.

The US federal government, the military included, is currently running under a stopgap bill, which temporarily keeps the government open. The stopgap, which has averted the looming government shutdown since June, freezes spending at Fiscal Year 2023 funding levels.

Given the fact that the Pentagon had not planned for the recent military buildup in the Middle East, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has had to pull money from existing operations and maintenance accounts to allocate elsewhere, the report said.

The DoD spokesperson said the Pentagon had to hunt for funds, which meant less money for training, exercises, and the deployments that the military had already planned for the year.

Sherwood said some payments owed by the US military to private military contractors and manufacturers could also be delayed.

Some "delivery of defense articles, services, and/or military education" could be paused, Sherwood said earlier in September when Pentagon was short of funds for Kiev.

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The Pentagon said it was still working to figure out the extent and costs of the US support planned for Israel.

In the meantime, the Pentagon continues to splurge US taxpayers’ money on its two main warring allies, Ukraine and Israel.

However, top officials have warned that pursuing the ongoing US military assignments under the current stopgap measure prevents the DoD from starting any new programs or paying for anything above the previous year’s levels.

The United States is Israel's biggest military ally, providing the Israeli regime with vast and varied weapons and ammunition consignments since the initiation of its war on Palestinians. Congress has approved billions of dollars worth of military aid for the Israeli regime.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

According to the Gaza-based health ministry, so far over 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli war, most of them women and children.

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