Pentagon seeks $95B war package as Iran conflict costs hit $37.5B

In the shadow of seventeen American deaths and a war that has already consumed $37.5 billion, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before the Senate this week to request $70 billion more for the conflict with Iran — a figure that arrived not as a conclusion, but as a question about how far a nation is willing to go. The hearing laid bare a familiar tension in democratic societies at war: the gap between the promises that begin conflicts and the costs that sustain them. With public support eroding, munitions running low, and Congress unable to assert a unified check on executive war-making,