First of all, I am 150% for Ron Paul. Does he talk about off budget items? I have not heard him talk about off budget defense items. The pie chart Dr. Paul has at the link in the last previous post says the Soetoro Administration says that they are going to spend around $700 billion on defense this year.
According to this article below, true military spending was around $1 trillion to $1.35 trillion in 2010.
AJ keeps saying it is around $ 2 trillion.
This is what I mean---no one truly knows how much they spend.
http://www.infowars.com/16-reasons-why-the-united-states-can-no-longer-afford-to-be-the-police-of-the-world/The American Dream
July 2, 2011
Did you know that the United States military is now bombing 6 different countries? U.S. aircraft are conducting air strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and now Somalia. There is a U.S. military base in over half of the countries on the planet and U.S. military spending is over 7 times larger than the military spending of any other nation on earth. Yes, the United States will always need a strong military. But with our national debt exploding at an exponential rate, can the United States really afford to continue to be the police of the world?
There are always going to be nutjobs in other countries that want to destroy the United States. In fact, the more we bomb the more they seem to multiply. The federal government seems obsessed with stamping out all terrorists wherever they may be found around the globe. But how will we ever know if we have gotten all of them? Does our government intend to occupy all of the countries of the Middle East eventually? Do we really have to police the entire globe in order to feel secure at home?
Trying to be the police of the world is getting awfully expensive. We have run up almost 4 trillion dollars more debt since Barack Obama was elected. Many thought that Barack Obama would reduce our foreign entanglements, but instead he has greatly expanded them.
In an article posted on a major UK news source describing the new U.S. airstrikes in Somalia, Declan Walsh noted that this is now the 6th country that the U.S. military is bombing on a regular basis….
Armed Predator and Reaper drones already operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where they are controlled by the US military or the CIA.
So are all of these airstrikes winning any “hearts and minds”?
Hardly.
Only 3 percent of the population of Pakistan supports our drone strikes in that country.
What we are doing is not working.
Perhaps it is time to fundamentally reassess our foreign policy.
Barack Obama seems to have gotten a real taste for using the military. He didn’t even bother to ask Congress when we started bombing Libya, and now there are persistent rumors that U.S. ground forces may soon be involved.
In fact, high ranking Russian diplomat Dmitry Rogozin says that he is convinced that NATO is beginning preparations for a ground invasion of Libya….
“I think that now we are witnessing the preparation stage of a ground operation which NATO, or at least some of its members… are ready to begin”
But Libya is not the only place that U.S. troops may be sent to.
The way that Obama administration officials are talking, war with Syria could potentially be on the horizon.
Things are getting really crazy out there. The U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt and yet we think that we can push around everyone else in the world.
This even extends to nations that are supposed to be our allies. According to the Jerusalem Post, Barack Obama has given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a one month ultimatum to agree to resume peace talks with the Palestinians based on pre-1967 borders.
The U.S. government doesn’t even try to do much diplomacy in the Middle East anymore. It seems like threats, ultimatums and bombings are the preferred tools.
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The rest of the world is going to remember our arrogance and our ruthlessness. When the United States needs help someday, the rest of the world might not be very inclined to give it.
Right now, the U.S. government is essentially bankrupt and the U.S. financial system is on the verge of the collapse. We have got to stop spending so much money.
The following are 16 reasons why the United States can no longer afford to be the police of the world….
#1 Prior to the beginning of the “War on Terror” our national debt was under 6 trillion dollars. Today, it has more than doubled and currently sits at a whopping 14.3 trillion dollars.
#2 Today, the U.S. military is in nearly 130 different nations and it has a total of about 700 military bases around the globe. It costs approximately 100 billion dollars each year to maintain these military bases.
#3 U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
#4 The United States already accounts for 46.5% of all military spending on the planet. China is next with only 6.6%.
#5 If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
#6 When you throw in all “off budget” items and other categories of “defense spending” not covered in the Pentagon budget you get a grand total ofsomewhere between $1.01 and $1.35 trillion spent on national defense in 2010.
