IMPEACH BUSH

WASHINGTON - After smothering efforts by war critics in Congress to drastically cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq, President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure -- totaling nearly $200 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2008, Pentagon officials said.

If Bush's spending request is approved, 2008 will be the most expensive year of the Iraq war.

U.S. war costs have continued to grow because of the additional combat forces sent to Iraq in 2007 and because of efforts to quickly ramp up production of new technology, such as mine-resistant trucks designed to protect troops from roadside bombs. The new trucks can cost three to six times as much as an armored Humvee.

The Bush administration said earlier this year that it probably would need $147.5 billion for 2008, but Pentagon officials now say that and $47 billion more will be required. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and other officials will formally present the full request at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing Wednesday (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).

The funding request means that war costs are projected to grow even as the number of deployed combat troops begins a gradual decline starting in December. Spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will rise from $173 billion this year to about $195 billion in fiscal 2008, beginning Oct. 1.

When costs of CIA operations and embassy expenses are added, the war in Iraq currently costs taxpayers about $12 billion a month, said Winslow Wheeler, a former Republican congressional budget aide who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

"Everybody predicts declines, but they haven't occurred, and 2008 will be higher than 2007," Wheeler said. "It all depends on what happens in Iraq, but thus far it has continued to get bloodier and more expensive. Everyone says we are going to turn the corner here, but the corner has not been turned."

In 2004, the two conflicts together cost $94 billion; in 2005, they cost $108 billion; in 2006, $122 billion.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan both are financed through a single administration request to Congress, and their costs are combined in the legislation. But the new spending request is likely to push the cumulative cost of the war in Iraq alone through 2008 past the $600 billion mark, more than the Korean War and nearly as much as the Vietnam War, based on estimates by government budget officials.

After the defeat this week of Democratic proposals to force faster troop withdrawals from Iraq, the new funding request presents a potential target for war critics on Capitol Hill.

"Now that we have a Democratic Congress and the war is less popular and we are not talking about $100 billion a year, but $200 billion a year -- some of which is not directly war related -- the question is whether the Congress will slim it down," said Steven Kosiak, vice president at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Military budget analysts said that just a small fraction of the additional $47 billion will go to support the additional forces in the troop surge. The bulk of the money will be spent on better armor, weapons systems and repairing the materiel ground down by the punishing environment of Iraq. Kosiak estimates only about $15 billion of the new request will be used to cover the surge forces. "They don't want to just replace what was worn out and destroyed, they want to get better stuff, and get more stuff in some cases," he said.

In developments Friday in Iraq, two aides to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's leading Shiite cleric, were assassinated in the south. It was the latest in a series of attacks on followers of Sistani, suggesting turbulence amid the principal Shiite groups in the south.

And the U.S. military reported the deaths of two American soldiers Thursday -- one in a roadside bombing in volatile Diyala province and another in a non-combat incident in the northern Tamim province, home to the disputed city of Kirkuk. The latest deaths raised the total for September to 52 deaths, icasualties.org reports.

At least 3,793 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war, according to an Associated Press count.