[Military spending} "such spending-totaling more than $1 trillion in 2008, according to the figures I’ve just cited-seems quite literally insane."

Saturday, September 22, 2007 by The Progressive | Pentagon Spending Totally Out of Control | by Amitabh Pal
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“In ‘constant’ (inflation adjusted) dollars the Pentagon budget is now significantly larger than at any time in recent history,” says the Center for Defense Information in a recent press release. “It is now larger than the previous peaks of Department of Defense spending for the Korean and Vietnam wars and the similarly large increase during the early part of the Reagan presidency.”

In the most recent fiscal year, the Pentagon was ladled out an incredible $600 billion, if you total the “regular” budget and special “emergency” appropriations. When you add the nuclear weapons program of the Department of Energy, VA spending, and other Homeland Security expenditure, the total came to $760 billion-plus.

On Tompaine.com, Robert Dreyfuss calculates the defense budget to be more than $1 trillion, if you total all the sundry items, plus interest payments on past defense spending. Dreyfuss, who has written a book on U.S. nurturing of Islamic radicalism, “Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam,” has no illusions about Al Qaeda. But he rightly asks:

“To a rational observer, such spending-totaling more than $1 trillion in 2008, according to the figures I’ve just cited-seems quite literally insane. ...
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