Which military dictatorship?

Okay, so first Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made big news for a couple of days with her quote and claim that maybe Iran was becoming a military dictatorship .

After I heard that, I thought (I may have said aloud), "Well, shoot, they could claim that of us."

And of course they did : "'They themselves' (the US) 'are involved in a sort of military dictatorship and have practically ignored the realities and the truths in the region,' Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, according to ISNA news agency."

And you know what?

They have a point, just not in the way they went at it.

Actually, they have a few points.

Look at the facts :

--The US outspends the entire world in military weapons, offensive and defensive. We spend 41.5% of all military outlays in the entire world ($607 billion);

--China (5.8% or $84.9 billion), France and the UK (each at 4.5%) and Russia (4.0%) make for 18.8% of the world's total defense spending;

--The next 10 countries combined, after our spending, only comprise 21.1% of the world total;

--The rest of the world's countries, again, combined, spend 18.6% of the world's total on defense spending and arms

Sure, we have a government that is "in charge" of our military so we're not officially a true military dictatorship.

Yet, anyway.

But the fact is, we don't seem capable of cutting back on our defense spending in any way. Our government leaders want the military/industrial complex firms booming in their districts to keep up their employment rolls.

Further, no one leader or political party wants to be seen as the one person or group who "weakened" our country, even if it just means wisely cutting back on defense spending that is far out of control.

It seems that the military corporations are the leaders of our country. They're the ones who are "in charge" of controlling our military. The Department of Defense works closely together with them to insure that they're budgets--and so, our spending--is high.

And no one dare ask if all this spending--deficits be damned--makes any sense for the future and well-being of the country.

Additional link on worldwide military spending:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures