The drop from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2011 war-spending request of $159 billion reflects President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce troop levels in the war zones and stricter White House rules on what costs can be included in the war budget, said the officials, who asked that their names not be used because the budget has not been formally released. “That’s the largest year-to-year decrease in total war funding since” the Afghan war began, Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst for the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said in an e-mail. “The bigger question here is what does this indicate in terms of strategy?” Harrison said. “With a year-to-year reduction in war funding of this magnitude, it appears to signal an intent to continue the withdrawal from Iraq and to begin reducing troops levels in Afghanistan during fiscal 2012,” he said.
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