You can imagine the overwhelming joy that comes over reporters when budget time rolls around. Actually, that is not true at all. The budget is literally binders thick with numbers, numbers, numbers. And the potential for mistakes is daunting. But budgets are important in Washington because they really are mission statements for the departments they represent. The Defense Department’s $663.8 budget, for example, moves more money toward irregular warfare because Secretary of Defense Robert Gates believes that is where the wars of the future (indeed the current conflicts) are headed.

There were two numbers that stood out to me. First, the FY 10 budget is the first to allot more money for the war in Afghanistan than Iraq, $65 billion and $61 billon, even though the military estimates that more troops will be based in Iraq. That brings me to the second interesting number. The budget assumes there will be 100,000 troops in Iraq and 68,000 in Afghanistan, even as the United States draws down in Iraq and ramps up in Afghanistan. So while more troops will be in Iraq, more resources are going to Afghanistan. What the budget tells me is that FY 10 will mark the official transition from one war zone to the next.

You can read more about the budget here.