Petraeus says no permanent bases planned in Afghanistan

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, emphasized to lawmakers on Friday that the United States does not plan to build permanent military bases in Afghanistan.

"The fact that concrete might endure a lot of C-17 [cargo plane] landings and hopefully endure beyond our departure, in fact, does not reflect any kind of commitment to ... an enduring presence," Petraeus told the House Military Construction-VA Appropriations Subcommittee at a hearing.

The Obama administration's $83.4 billion wartime supplemental spending request includes $867 million for military construction projects in Afghanistan. The House Appropriations Committee could mark up the war request the first week in May -- a week later than previously expected. Senate appropriators will meet on Thursday with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss the supplemental request in anticipation of that panel's markup. The administration sent the $75.8 billion request to Capitol Hill April 9.

During Friday's hearing, Petraeus also gave a strong endorsement to Gates' fiscal 2010 budget proposal, which he called a "warfighter's budget." The proposal, which will not formally go to Capitol Hill until next month, includes funding for "items that everybody can't get enough of, such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms and a variety of other intelligence items," Petraeus said.

Gates, whose budget changes the Pentagon's spending priorities to focus more directly on immediate warfighting needs, wants to increase the so-called ISR accounts by $2 billion, including money for Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles.

Petraeus also said there would be funding to address critical shortfalls in certain high-demand military specialties, such as military construction engineers and route-clearance teams. The budget request "gets at the shortages, and the enablers in particular -- these forces that everyone needs."