Saturday, January 31, 2009

Military Spending

Over at Opinione there's a great article, We have met the enemy and he is us. It's all about military spending.
It is virtually impossible for a member of Congress or an ordinary citizen to obtain even a modest handle on the actual size of military spending or its impact on the structure and functioning of our economic system. Some $30 billion of the official Defense Department (DoD) appropriation in the current fiscal year is “black,” meaning that it is allegedly going for highly classified projects.

I remember some years ago it came out that the Pentagon had budgeted huge sums on simple tools that had been marked up to twenty or thirty times their usual cost. The scandal was such that everyone was outraged, but was anything done? Are things different today?
For fiscal year 2006, Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculated national security outlays at almost a trillion dollars - $934.9 billion to be exact - broken down as follows (in billions of dollars):
Department of Defense: $499.4
Department of Energy (atomic weapons): $16.6
Department of State (foreign military aid): $25.3
Department of Veterans Affairs (treatment of wounded soldiers): $69.8
Department of Homeland Security (actual defense): $69.1
Department of Justice (1/3rd for the FBI): $1.9
Department of the Treasury (military retirements): $38.5
NASA (satellite launches): $7.6
Interest on war debts, 1916-present: $206.7

Totaled, the sum is larger than the combined sum spent by all other nations on military security.

Do you find these numbers excessive? Have they increased over the last eight years, or does this kind of thing predate the last administration's bumbling attempts at running the world?

Another way to describe the impact of this spending on the average person is this:
According to calculations by the National Priorities Project, a non-profit research organization that examines the local impact of federal spending policies, military spending today consumes 40% of every tax dollar.

Is this something we can expect the new administration to do something about? Is it something that they should do something about, in your opinion? What do you think?

I've heard lots about leaving Iraq, but at the same time they were talking about building up Afghanistan? What gives with that? It seems to me that the underlying element is that a huge chunk of everybody's money must go for military spending, once that's a given, then we can discuss what wars and what operations get funded? Does that sound too cynical?

What's your opinion?

15 comments:

  1. Mike,

    It is virtually impossible for a member of Congress or an ordinary citizen to obtain even a modest handle on the actual size of military spending or its impact on the structure and functioning of our economic system.

    For fiscal year 2006, Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculated national security outlays at almost a trillion dollars - $934.9 billion to be exact

    Isn't that a little contradictory? People can't get a handle on the size but Higgs calculated it to be $934.9 billion dollars?

    Love how Higgs includes the Department of State in his list, Department of Homeland Security gets added in...as if Border Control and Immigration is a military responsibility instead of civilian.

    Department of Justice..with the FBI only getting a 1/3 of the budget is also included...perhaps the goal was to inflate the numbers a little, eh?

    I'm more concerned about the run away growth in non-discretionary spending for Social Security, Medicaid/Medicare and other entitlement programs. Sorry but the nebulous "general welfare" doesn't cover such excessive spending while the military functions of the government are clearly laid out in the Constitution.

    What good does it do to have all our people living in government housing, eating government food, kept healthy by government health-care IF we aren't able to defend ourselves?

    I think the government needs to be honest with the people. List how much money is going to be spent on secret projects and tell them that Congress is providing oversight of those programs...isn't that Congress' job?

    Being the "koolaid" drinker that I am, I support a strong military. I support removing a dictator that defied repeatedly international law. I supported and continue to support President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. At the time the decision was made, the decision was made with what we knew then....not what we know now.

    I support the war in Afghanistan. Contrary to other people's opinion, these actions have helped keep America safe since the 9/11.

    If that isn't the purpose of the government, what is?

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  2. Being the "koolaid" drinker that I am...

    Step one, Bob. Good for you! "My name is Bob and I am a drinker."

    You are on your way to recovery and we will be there to support you should you continue on this new, but scary road.

    Being the "koolaid" drinker that I am, I support a strong military. I support removing a dictator that defied repeatedly international law. I supported and continue to support President Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq. At the time the decision was made, the decision was made with what we knew then....not what we know now.

    I support the war in Afghanistan. Contrary to other people's opinion, these actions have helped keep America safe since the 9/11.

    If that isn't the purpose of the government, what is?


    One of the "purposes" of a Federal government is to protect its citizens from foreign invasion and threats of invasion. Naturally one ought to debate the word 'threats' to understand whether our Commander-in-Chief himself understood the 'threat' posed by Saddam Hussein.

    Being a third-world blathering dictator does not in itself qualify as a foreign threat to this nation. Of course, with the proper propaganda and a compliant press, an ideological junta might be able to convince a large segment of the population to believe the 'threat' possibility.

    This junta, as we all know, had the good fortune to add to their scare-propaganda the 9-11 attacks, fresh in the minds of the citizens. How often were '9-11' and 'Saddam Hussein' juxtaposed in the same sentence?

    The 9-11 scare factor was most effective was an effective propaganda technique for a second reason, beyond the panic value: it spoke of un-sated vengeance as well as fear.

    It was a perfect piece of propaganda; Goebbles would have been most proud.

    Many Americans were completely bamboozled by this stunning propaganda masterpiece; I was not. That's why i stood on frozen street corners during that bitterly cold winter with my NO WAR! sign.

    The hoodwinked public, having drunk deeply, disdained my suggestion, hurling insults and middle fingers my way as they passed. They knew Patriotism and I was a communist pig.

    Well, they won. Bob, you won too. The propaganda campaign was a complete success. Patriotic fervor won out over logical thinking.

    God bless America.

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  3. From Merriam Webster online

    Junta - 1: a council or committee for political or governmental purposes ; especially : a group of persons controlling a government especially after a revolutionary seizure of power

    If the Bush administration was such a Junta....why did they give up power instead of declaring martial law...instead of overthrowing the established Constitution?

    Perhaps if you are wrong about that Mud, you are wrong about much else?

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  4. I liked him better when he WASN'T trolling...

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  5. So neither of you tow dwellers on the right can come up with anything more that these last 2 comments?

    Tragic.

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  6. I agree with Mud. The ones who still believe in Bush's policies were estimated at 22%. Of those, I'd bet if you pressed them, half would waver on this Iraq justification but want to align themselves in some vague way with the 22% anyway. That would bring the true Iraq believers, the real Sadam Husein-was-a-danger-to-us crowd down to about 10%.

    That's a smaller minority than I often find myself in with my position on guns and capital punishment.

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  7. I reposted an essay I wrote a few years ago here:
    http://weerdbeard.livejournal.com/475514.html

    Enjoy you guys!

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  8. Nay, you guys are right...Saddam was never a danger to anyone

    Salman Pak
    Former Iraqi military officers have described a highly secret terrorist training facility at Salman Pak, where both Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs receive training on hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage, and assassinations.

    Equipment-moving trucks and refrigerated trucks were observed at the Salman Pak BW facility prior to the onset of bombing, suggesting that Iraq was moving equipment or material into or out of the facility. Information obtained after the conflict revealed that Iraq had moved BW agent production equipment from Salman Pak to the Al Hakam suspect BW facility.

    raq told UN inspectors that Salman Pak was an anti-terror training camp for Iraqi special forces. However, two defectors from Iraqi intelligence stated that they had worked for several years at the secret Iraqi government camp, which had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995. Training activities including simulated hijackings carried out in an airplane fuselage [said to be a Boeing 707] at the camp. The camp is divided into distinct sections. On one side of the camp young, Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam are trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage. The Islamic militants trained on the other side of the camp, in an area separated by a small lake, trees and barbed wire. The militants reportedly spent time training, usually in groups of five or six, around the fuselage of the airplane. There were rarely more than 40 or 50 Islamic radicals in the camp at one time.

    NRO on the 9/11 connection

    Not far from Baghdad, Coalition forces may uncover evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime with airline hijackings in general and the September 11 attacks in particular.

    Salman Pak, a training camp on the Tigris River some 15 miles southeast of Iraq's capital, could clarify this question. According to Iraqi defectors and U.S. intelligence analysts, this is where Hussein's agents polished the air-piracy skills of foreign Islamist terrorists...
    Details on this facility and its al Qaeda ties recently emerged in a Manhattan federal courtroom. Former CIA Director James Woolsey and Iraq scholar Laurie Mylroie offered sworn expert testimony in a largely overlooked lawsuit filed by the families of two people killed on 9/11. They are suing Iraq's government, among other rogue entities and individuals, for allegedly helping to murder their loved ones...
    "I believe it is definitely more likely than not that some degree of common effort in the sense of aiding or abetting or conspiracy was involved here between Iraq and the al Qaeda," Woolsey said on March 3. President Clinton's CIA chief from 1993 to 1995 added: "Even if one cannot show that...any of the individual 19 hijackers were trained at Salman Pak, the nature of the training and the circumstances suggest, to my mind, at least, some kind of common aiding, abetting, assistance, cooperation — whatever word you might want to take...

    Meanwhile, in a February 24 letter to James Beasley, Jr., the attorney in the aforementioned lawsuit, Czech U.N. Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek affirms an October 26, 2001 statement by Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross: "In this moment we can confirm, that during the next stay of Mr. Muhammad Atta in the Czech Republic there was the contact with the official of the Iraqi intelligence, Mr. Al Ani, Ahmed Khalin Ibrahim Samir, who was on 22nd April 2001 expelled from the Czech Republic on the basis of activities which were not compatible with the diplomatic status." Atta flew from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Prague on April 7, 2001. Car-rental records place him in the Czech capitol the next day. He flew home to Florida that April 9.

    Iraq also is tied to the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Chief conspirator Ramzi Yousef reached America bearing an Iraqi passport, although he fled to Pakistan on a Pakistani passport issued to one Abdul Basit Karim, a Pakistani-born resident of Kuwait whose identity Mylroie surmises that Yousef assumed, perhaps with the help of Iraqi intelligence agents who had access to immigration files before U.S. and allied forces drove them from Kuwait.

    For his part, Indiana-born and Iraqi-reared Abdul Rahman Yasin — indicted for mixing the chemicals in the bomb that shook the Twin Towers, killing six and injuring roughly 1,000 people — returned to Iraq after the explosion, stopping first at the Iraqi embassy in Amman, Jordan. He lived freely in Baghdad for a year. Iraqi officials say they have kept him in custody since 1994, though they neither have prosecuted him nor extradited him to face American justice.


    Let's close with this:

    So why has the Bush administration not highlighted these ominous connections? One theory is that showcasing pre-9/11 evidence of Salman Pak might make people wonder why nothing was done about it before the atrocity. Another view is that federal officials who implemented President Clinton's light touch towards Iraq are in no hurry to remind Americans of how foolish their policy was.

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  9. Are these responses acceptable to you, Muddy?

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  10. Bob and Weer'd, If you feel that way about Iraq and its leadership in retrospect, what do you have to say about Iran? We better go right in there, don't you think? He's got the weapons, he's got the threatening attitude, hell he's even got oil. What do you say?

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  11. Any proof that Iran has broken International Treaties Mike?

    Any evidence, which was presented for Iraq, that Iran has weapons of mass destruction?

    No one wants war, but at times it is the only way to resolve the situations.

    Can you honestly say that Saddam Hussein would have followed all of the U.N. sanctions if he would have had just a little more time?

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  12. Well I'd say Iran has WMDs....no doubt of it actually....and there's no problem with that because Iran is under no peace agreement to NOT have WMDs.

    They have yet to violate any international law (with exception of the dubious "non proliferation" nuclear weapons law, which I don't support).

    Finally we haven't attempted peacful means to pressure the nation to stop it's threatening deeds. (The Failed Oil-for-food program was our economic sanction on Iraq...Saddam simply worked around that one and sold black-market oil for his warchest to France, Germany, Russia, and Australia)

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  13. Finally we haven't attempted peacful means to pressure the nation [Iran] to stop it's threatening deeds.

    we haven't?! what's that thirty-year trade embargo on the place been for, then?

    oh, that's right; same thing the equally long embargo of Cuba's been about - us pouting over having been kicked out on our sorry hineys.

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  14. Heh, caught me in that one, Nomen. Another useless embargo.

    As a friend of mine said: "If the UN was formed in the '30s we'd still be waiting for those economic sanctions to kick in on Nazi Germany.

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  15. Weer'd,

    I'll help you out here. The embargoes against Iran and Cuba are that dreaded "unilateral" action by the US.

    Remember, when the US acts alone it's going against the rest of the world in cowboy, imperialistic actions.

    On the other hand, the sanctions against Iraq were approved by the U.N. -- not unilateral by the US-- but we saw how well that worked.

    Can you say oil for food scandal.

    I think the embargoes do show the useless nature of most of those measures and the reason why military action is required occasionally such as removing Saddam.

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