Yes, far left. If you don't like someone calling you out on posting far left propaganda then don't post far left propaganda. - Draginol
You aren't 'calling me out' on squat, what I don't care for is you attempting to lump the sources I've provided in with DU. I've asked you to explain what you mean by far left when these groups are about accountability for military spending. As I mentioned, if we were spending this amount of money on peanut butter research, how many people would be in states of near hysteria by now?
The use of graphs detailing military budgets as part of a country's Gross Domestic Product is very clever, Draginol. In glancing at the graphs, many would breath a sigh of relief and think that we are actually spending less money on the military today then we once were and less then other countries. However, that is simply not true. We spend more money today then we ever have on the military machine and we spend more money then any other country.
Your statement;
The US spends more on its military simply because it has so much more available to spend. - Draginol
Is disturbing to me as it seems to promote the idea that if we have more to spend, we should and will do so on the military as opposed to paying down the deficet, returning the money to the taxpayer, or funneling the money to government services that will more directly aid it's citizens.
I don't understand why we would tax and spend like that when we are in a deficet. When this attitude of spending more on military because we can is applied, we understand why a large percentage of our evergrowing deficet is due to military spending.
Spending that continues to go up and up.
* For Fiscal Year 2006 it was $441.6 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2005 it was $420.7 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2004 it was $399.1 billion
* For Fiscal Year 2003 it was $396.1 billion.
* For Fiscal Year 2002 it was $343.2 billion.
* For Fiscal Year 2001 it was $305 billion. And Congress had increased that budget request to $310 billion.
* This was up from approximately $288.8 billion, in 2000.
LinkTo top it off these figures do not include the second Iraq War and Afghanistan which is estimated to cost an additional $315 billion dollars. Here is a picture of what that additional amount of money would look like.
This pile is 125 feet wide, 200 feet deep, and 450 feet tall.
450 feet is the height of a 38-story building. It's the height of the Millenium Wheel in London. It is also the height of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and the Louisiana State Capitol Building.
If you were to stack the money in a single stack, your stack would be 19,887 miles tall, enough to wrap the Moon at its equator almost 3 times.See the little guy and his car near the bottom?
LinkAs for us seemingly spending less money then previous years on the military, Chris Hellman has noted;
...when adjusted for inflation the request for 2007 together with that needed for nuclear weapons the 2007 spending request exceeds the average amount spent by the Pentagon during the Cold War, for a military that is one-third smaller than it was just over a decade ago. - http://www.fcnl.org/now/pdf/2006/mar06.pdf
So what does all this mean? How does it pertain to my point that we aren't seeing a good return on our dollar?
Remember this?

For some reason, though we've spent more money on military spending then any of these other countries we've seen a major terrorist attack succeed on our soil.
It didn't happen to Canada, which spends the least.
If you look at all the countries on the graph, you find they've spent far less then we have on 'defense' spending and had greater success then we have.
I propose we cut our defense spending to Japanese levels and use our defense monies wisely and on a more defensive and less pre-emptive more preventive level. We don't need to play world policeman or engage in nation building as we are currently experiencing what an extremely bad decision that is.
Let's save some bucks and restore some rationality to our nation, everyone, how about it?