We need to get this hog out of the trough

Last evening I watched the movie "Why We Fight", about the United States build-up to attack Iraq in 2003, the actual attack and its aftermath.

Very enlightening, for sure.

Besides President Eisenhower's warning to keep the "military-industrial complex" in check, which is so frequently repeated lately, it was illuminating on exactly what we've don over there and showed a rather direct and blatant connection between Darth Dick Cheney, Halliburton, KBR and the situation.

So this morning I searched for some US Department of Defense data on our military budget and came up with some staggering information.

No surprise, really. We've heard some of this stuff for years.

As a country, we all seem really concerned, still, about Russia--or the people and land mass that used to be called Russia.

First of all, you have to know that the United States GROSSLY outspends ALL OTHER NATIONS ON THE PLANET in this ugly, wasteful, paranoid defense spending. We pay about 711 billion dollars a year on all this stuff.

Keep in mind, we have acres and acres of old military jets and other equipment, decaying in the desert. That's where a lot of this spending has gone.

Other nations spending, you might ask?

Number 2 on the list, in terms of spending, is all of Europe at $289 billion.

China? No. 3 at $211 billion.

Russia is number 6, for pity's sake, at $70 billion a year.

Why the paranoia, Amerika?

Who's the real "war monger"?

Why are we still fighting World War II by being in Germany and Okinawa, etc?

Why are we still building nuclear submarines? The next war will absolutely, simply be an air war. We know that. That's the way we've fought our most recent wars. (I refuse to call them skirmishes. It's too tame for what we do.)

Either that or it will be the continuing war with terrorists, which we've, again, known all along and you don't fight terrorists with nuclear submarines.

Between what we send overseas, mostly to the Middle East, for oil and what we waste on Department of Defense spending, this is clearly not sustainable.

We'll go bankrupt keeping this up.

Not as though we aren't already.

We have to get this pig out of the trough.

We'll all be and do better for it.

We need to have our Congressional representatives stop voting to continue these stupid, expensive, useless appropriations for war.

We can certainly educate, clothe, house, feed and nurse a whole lot more people with all that money.

It would be far better spent on "butter" than guns.
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Anup Shah, World Military Spending, GlobalIssues.org, Last updated: Saturday, March 01, 2008