Military Spending

Corruption in Military Spending

An article in today’s New York Times reports that fraud was widespread in military contracts for supplies and services emanating from US military bases in Kuwait. Indications are that the fraud may go far beyond these instances. It seems that at the same time many members of the military are fighting and dying others are ripping off the taxpayer and the amounts involved are tremendous.
Since 1980, except for 1998 and 1999, the annual defense budget exceeded three hundred billion dollars. Beginning with 2003 we spent the following amounts in billions of dollars on our military: 2003 404.91, 2004 455.91, 2005 495.31, 2006 535.91, 2007 527.41. That’s a lot of money much more than any other country spent. In 2005 the top ten military spenders were (in billions of Dollars): The United Kingdom 48.3, France 46.2, Japan 42.1, China 41, Germany 33, Italy 27, Saudi Arabia 25.2, Russia 21, India 20, a total of 251.8 The United States spent more on its military than the top ten other nations combined. Was such a rate of spending really necessary? It’s true the US was at war, but their enemies were insurgents and militias without major weaponry. Hundreds of billions of dollars wasn’t necessary to meet their challenge. The US does maintain an Imperial system with more than 700 bases across the globe. Has the American people ever been asked if this is what they want done with their tax money? We need better schools, our transportation system is old fashion and run down, our health care system is behind that of most other industrial nations and I could go on and on. Maybe we should be spending our money on these things rather than a meaningless war in Iraq and military bases spread across the planet intended to protect the interest of Multi-national corporations.
But nobody talks about this problem. The media rarely mentions it. O.J. Simpson’s antics get a hundred times the coverage. Nor, is this problem a part of the presidential campaign. But it is the most important problem facing our nation, for to afford this vast military expenditure we’ve had to borrow. Today our country is deeper in debt than ever before and that debt is owed to foreign national banks. Japan, China and South Korea hold our marker for most of the nearly nine trillion dollars. Furthermore, daily more borrowing is necessary just to keep the government running. If the lenders decide they can no longer finance our government’s machinations, we will face financial pandemonium.
All of this makes me question if our government is on the level. Could it be that our government in Washington is a great conspiracy to rob the American taxpayer. If this issue is not raised among our presidential candidates, and presented to the American voters, I will have to assume the great American experiment has failed.