Jeremy Lemer, Christine Spolar: Pentagon sees Libya Military Costs Soar

US military operations in Libya are on course to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more than the Pentagon estimated, according to figures obtained by the Financial Times. Robert Gates, the outgoing secretary of defense, said last month that the Pentagon expected to spend "somewhere in the ball park of $750m" in the 2011 fiscal year as part of efforts to protect the Libyan people. (what a bunch of bullshit - Having watched the destruction of Dresden during World War II, I can testify that bombing runs against a civilian population is NOT an efficient method of "protecting people".) But according to the Pentagon, from whom all blessings flow, which has been kind enough to include a detailed update on the progress and pace of operations, by mid-May US operations in Libya had cost $664m, a figure confirmed by the Department of Defense. The document, entitled the "United States Contribution to Operation Unified Protector", adds that US costs are running at a rate of $2 million a day, or $60m a month. The memo has been circulating on Capitol Hill since last week. The DoD declined to comment on the increased costs of the operation. The pace of spending is higher than reported by the DoD comptroller's office in late March. In a congressional hearing, Pentagon officials said that the US had spent about $550m on Libya, at a rate of about $40m a month. If spending remains at the increased rate until the end of the recently extended NATO authorization period, the DoD could face an extra bill of about $274m to pay for a combination of air strikes, refueling operations, and intelligence-gathering missions, putting further strain on its budget!