Pentagon Getting Trillions Ready For War?

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

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US seeks more military budget for war?
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Press TV
Sun, 12 Oct 2008

http://www. presstv. ir/detail. aspx?id=72009&sectionid=3510203

The Pentagon has reportedly proposed a $450 billion increase in the military budget in a move believed to be in preparation for a war

The new military budget estimate for the next five years is expected to be revealed shortly before President George W.
Bush leaves office in January 2009

The fiscal 2010 portion of the estimate includes a $57 billion increase, $30 billion of which would be allocated to a vaguely defined contingency fund and $14 billion would be used for replacing or repairing existing military equipment or 'reset and modernization'

The new budget numbers raise speculation about the likelihood of a new US military engagement as it highlights Defense Department fears that the already record-high military budgets would be grossly insufficient in the years ahead

Since taking office, the Bush administration has increased baseline military spending by 30 percent, which puts the annual military spending, at its highest level since World War II

While 'reset and modernization' funds in the proposal are relatively unlikely to arouse controversy, the $30 billion contingency fund could face fierce opposition

If approved, the contingency fund would help the rapid deployment of US forces overseas in the event of an unexpected crisis

The incoming administration would decide on the newly-proposed military budget and the large increase in overall defense funds

"This is a political document," said one former senior budget official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"It sets up the new administration immediately to have to make a decision of how to deal with the perception that they are either cutting defense or adding to it"

The US presidential candidates differ on their policies regarding military issues

While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama only supports the current planned increase of 92,000 Army and Marine Corps personnel, his Republican rival John McCain is pushing for an additional 150,000 troops to be paid for within the initially-introduced budget



Trillions had ALREADY been stolen the DAY before 9-11, 2001

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With All Eyes on the Bailout, House Passes Trillion-Dollar Defense Bill
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It's 'empire spending,' not 'defense spending'

AlterNet
By Joshua Holland
Posted September 26, 2008

http://www. alternet. org/waroniraq/100524/with_all_eyes_on_the_bai...

On Wednesday, the House passed a mammoth defense bill by a 392-39 vote.
It's expected to clear the Senate with little difficulty next week

It was part of a trillion-dollar stop-gap measure to keep programs running through next March, allowing lawmakers to skip town without passing a final budget.
The Associated Press reports, "The legislation came together in a remarkably secret process that concentrated decision-making power in the hands of a few lawmakers"

In keeping with the tradition of recent years, Bush held a gun to his own head and threatened to pull the trigger if his demands weren't met. According to the AP, "To earn President Bush's signature rather than a veto, House and Senate negotiators dropped several provisions he opposed. They include a ban on private interrogators in U.S.
military detention facilities and what would have amounted to congressional veto power over a security pact with Iraq"

In other words, Congress also maintained recent tradition, swearing not to give Bush a blank check and then whipping out their pens and signing a blank check

The number that the House sent to the Senate for "defense" -- $612 billion for the coming year -- is eye-popping. Imagine a stack of 612,000 million-dollar bills.
Quite a pile

That number's a sham, however. The budget calls for $68.6 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009.
War costs this year totaled $182 billion, according to the Federation of American Scientists

The House passed the Brobdingnagian spending measure 11 months after George W. Bush vetoed a bill -- one passed with a lot of bipartisan support -- that would have added $7 billion measly dollars per year to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, covering 4 million more uninsured children.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a clearer sign of national psychosis

Here's what "defense" spending looks like in the era of Bush's "War on Terror," according to official figures:

But that's just the cash to feed the gaping maw of the Department of Defense.
Throw in a bit more than $50 billion for Homeland Security, around $20 billion for the nuclear arsenal in the Department of Energy's budget, about $10 billion for the Coast Guard, a similar number for foreign "security assistance" and maybe another $125 billion -- according to one estimate -- in other defense-related programs scattered throughout the federal budget

Bush also requested $91 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2009, up from $72 billion just three years ago. A generation of damaged young men and women are going to cost more and more as the years go by -- many post-traumatic injuries, for example, don't manifest themselves for 10 or more years after people get out of combat.
In 2000, nine years after the first Gulf War, 56 percent of those who had served in that conflict were receiving disability payments

But wait, as they say on late-night infomercials, there's more!

All of this only finances our current military adventures. We're still paying for Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and the first Gulf War and Somalia and the Balkans and on and on.
Estimates of just how much of our national debt payments are from past military spending vary wildly Economist Robert Higgs calculated it like this:


I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year's ratio of narrowly defined national security spending--military, veterans, and international affairs--to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 91.2 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2006.
Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government's net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending

In 2006, he came up with a figure of $206.7 billion for interest payments on past militarism. Add it all up, and we're talking about at least a trillion dollars in military and homeland security spending.
If there were a million-dollar bill, you'd have to stack a million of them to reach a trillion dollars

Of course, very little of this is "defense." This is empire spending, pure and simple ...

What's that? You want health care, education, affordable housing, 21st-century infrastructure?

Sorry, we've got other priorities.