Posted this morning at Electric Politics, a podcast interview with Winslow Wheeler, who had worked on U.S. military budgets for over thirty years within government and who for the past ten years has been a critical voice of conscience outside government. Very few people know these numbers as well as Winslow does. And as he says, the first step in deciding what we want is to be informed.
The Pentagon recently released its proposed 2013 budget. The problem is, as usual, that the Pentagon doesn't count large categories of spending which, conceptually, should be counted within the military budget. Things like the cost of building nuclear bombs. Or some military health care. Reputable foreign organizations that track world military spending -- like IISS or SIPRI -- aren't fooled. Their estimates run about 50% higher than what the U.S. officially declares. But, to be realistic, the level of U.S. military spending is actually much higher still: about twice what the Pentagon and the White House say it is, or about one trillion dollars. That's about 7% of GDP, or four to five times what other industrial nations spend. What's even worse is that the Pentagon budget is deliberately intended to fool Americans into assuming our spending is unobjectionable.
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http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2012/03/washingtons_warlords.html
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