The warnings by the heads of the army, the marine corps, and the air force were at odds with the Pentagon's political leadership, which has said there will be no request for supplemental funding for Iraq until 2005, after the US elections.

"I am concerned on how we bridge between the end of this fiscal year and whenever we can get a supplemental in the next year," General Peter Schoomaker, chief of staff of the army, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "And I do not have an answer for exactly how we would do that."

Schoomaker, who said the army is spending at a rate of about 3.7 billion dollars a month in Iraq and another 800 to 900 million dollars a month in Afghanistan, said it will run out of money by early September.

Marine Corps Commandant General Michael Hagee and Air Force Chief of Staff General John Jumper said they would have to resort to "cash flow" or "forward funding" to defray operating costs beyond fiscal year 2004, which ends October

"We will have a challenge during that first quarter," said Hagee. "We will take actions like general Jumper mentioned, like forward funding or cash flowing until supplemental funding became available."

Hagee estimated that marine corps operations in Iraq this year will cost about 1.5 billion dollars.

Admiral Vernon Clark, the naval chief of operations, said he was not concerned for the moment because the navy faces no surge in demand on its forces in the immediate future.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred reporters to the White House for an explanation of why it will wait until 2005 to ask for additional funding for military operations if the services will run out of money by September.

"Check it at the White House. They've made the decision and the OMB," he said, referring to the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Rumsfeld said the Congress has typically funded military operations in past conflicts with emergency supplemental appropriations.

When the Pentagon requested contingency funding for future military operations in Afghanistan in 2003 budget request, it was turned down by the Congress, he noted.

"I believe it's probably the correct pattern to use supplementals, although I tried to do it differently the year before," he said.

The administration's decision not to request additional funding for Iraq has been criticized as an attempt to put off the bill for Iraq until after the November 2 presidential elections.

Democrats have targeted both Iraq and the swelling US budget deficits as campaign issues.

A senior defense official, who briefed reporters this month on the budget, said the Pentagon would not seek supplemental funding until 2005 because the uncertain situation in Iraq made it too difficult to estimate the cost of future operations.

The Pentagon's plan to use emergency supplementals -- rather than the regular budget -- to fund a 30,000-man increase in the size of the army also came under fire from senators on both sides of the aisle.

"I think what it does is it increases the size of the deficit, and again it deceives the American people about the size of the debt we are incurring now," said Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona.

Schoomaker said he needed to increase the size of the army by 30,000 over the next four or five years while he carries out a reorganization that aims to carve more combat brigades out of the same number of troops.

Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said,"I think it's a deceptive way to finance the operations of the military and I think it has practical ramifications, also."

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