The administration did send occasional progress reports to Congress disclosing that the emergency money was being spent for “increased situational awareness” and “increased worldwide posture.” But it was only last week that the Pentagon produced a more specific–and potentially controversial–list of 21 projects, worth $178.4 million, which it admits were funded with emergency antiterror money before Congress approved a war resolution on Iraq. Most of the plans involved improving military facilities in Kuwait and Qatar–principal staging areas for the Iraq war. Two projects involved building new gas, oil and lubrication facilities in Kuwait–of questionable use to forces fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The biggest item on the list was a $36 million upgrade to a U.S. CENTCOM base in Qatar that later became a key Iraq-war command post. A Pentagon spokeswoman insists that “these projects were not intended for any particular threat or mission” and claimed they were helpful in supporting antiterror operations in “Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and other areas of the Middle East.”
