And this is a truer picture of the "defense" budget, enjoy:

In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released to the press on February 7, 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4 billion for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of $141.7 billion for the "supplemental" budget to fight the "global war on terrorism" -- that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4 billion to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional "allowance" (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50 billion to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This comes to a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5 billion.

But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the American military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt, and Pakistan). Another $1.03 billion outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and reenlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military itself, up from a mere $174 million in 2003, the year the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7 billion, 50% of which goes for the long-term care of the grievously injured among the at least 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and another 1,708 in Afghanistan.

Let me put everyone's mind at ease. After sleeping, eating, breathing and living the military for twenty five years I can assure you that NO ONE will ever, or ATTEMPT to ever invade the USA.

We are spending billions and have spent TRILLIONS just so we can harrass a bunch of goat herders in Afghanistan and Iraq and they have STILL no been subdued.

The sole purpose of our military is to enrich defense contractors and maintain our empire, an empire that the world is becoming less enamored with with each passing day.

Rome fell because of it's military follies and so shall we. We can no longer afford this madness.

If the elite were not hell bent on ruling the world then there would be no need to go overseas to protect our selves.BIDGP

George Bush re-writes the preamble to the
Constitution of the United States.

"The Apocalypse: the survival me and my closest friends. Everyone else, who we refer to as "the poor", will be dead, but at least for now they have hope, so good luck."

My people, in order for you to ensure that I, George Bush and my friends, survive the glorious apocalypse that we foresee as a self fulfilling prophesy do by here order the change to the Constitution of the U.S. of America. As follows:

1) War and war spending is good, because it makes me and my friends rich fast. The people we blow up are not Americans anyway so it will be less death to deal with when the glorious Apocalypse comes. The pain and suffering caused as a result of our actions is for poor people, those who are not my closest friends, to address. At least the poor have hope.

2)There is NO LAW that I or my friends must follow. We cannot be convicted of crime. Laws and justice are for the poor, those who are not my closest friends. At least the poor have hope.

3) The earth's resources and environment are for me and my closest friends to destroy and pollute as long as it makes us rich. The poor, or those who are not my closest friends, have to suffer the consequences of my actions. At least the poor have hope.

4) If you don't like it, we'll take your hope as well. We did it in Iraq we can do it to you. God Bless America. Keep clinging to hope its all you got until we take it away.

Dennis Kucinich asked that just 10% of the Pentagon budget - or The Department of Death, as I call it - be set aside for a Department of Peace.

Does anyone really care about spreading peace at the Pentagon? Of course not!

I watched a documentary on HBO this past weekend, filmed in 2006 by a young Iraqi journalist, Omer Madhi, call Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone. This is a sad story about Iraqi doctors, operating under the most primitive conditions imaginable. No painkillers, no diagnostic equipment, little electricity, constant fear, and horrendous trauma. Medicine performed by doctors who live under constant threat because they treat everyone.

What strikes you the most is these people are human beings who want there"s lives back under Saddam, yes Saddam, even Shiites. They conclude that any fear that they harbored under him was nothing compared to being subjected to random bombing, violence and executions. They have concluded their own government, military, and police are completely ineffective and corrupt. They are very conflicted with the US military, because US troops provide the only source of security, which is fair at best. They are also afraid of US forces and are convinced that the US invaded to steal their resources. One man struck me in particular, a merchant who sold plastic goods and poultry, frozen chicken. A bomb went off in front of his shop, leaving him badly burned and full of metal fragments. The doctors had to probe him with needles because there is no e-ray film. The hospital generators can barely run fans and the lighting needed in the operating room needed in 120-degree heat. Is this the enemy a hand full of doctors, a merchant selling chicken and plastic goods the maimed woman and children?

The film maker lost 17 members of his own family up to that point and had to leave the country 2007, most of the doctors burned out from treating constant trauma injury, and living in fear have left Iraq also.

I hope Bush-Cheney and the neo-cons are proud themselves, a wonderful experiment in democracy and free market capitalism, yet the average Iraqis still doesn"t hate us, go figure, quoting one doctor "we have lost our ability to smile, our happiness".

This makes me sick. Our infrastructure is falling down around us, our economy in the crapper, 45 million Americans are without health insurance, our schools are falling apart and the mentally ill administraion decides that the military needs more money. The militaries job is to protect the country but at this rate it won't be long before there's no country to protect.

GDP has little to do with military expenditures. Unless GDP provides for more tax revenue. If tax revenue remains the same or declines, the government has to take money from programs that provide for the commonwealth of all Americans and applies it to defense.

Comparing defense spending to GDP is a crock of sh*t. Instead, compare defense spending to revenue. Someone find out how much a hammer costs The Department of Defense. Or an ordinary pen. Or, for that matter, a wingnut. Are we in a World War? If not, why are we spending like we are?

Defense provides for just that, defense. Iraq is not defensive in nature. Iraq is war profiteering at its worst. War profiteering bought and paid for by those who possess the real power and wealth of the nation. They have assumed the mantle of government. You no longer count for much other than as a consumer.

While, bridges collapse, education remains in the grips of incompetence, health insurance is increasingly unaffordable, you suffer. And you vote for the Republicans and Democrats who make all this possible. Suckers.

To all the Republicans who chant the mantra like some cult members, "Government is wasteful.", you have to remember something. Corporations and wealthy people are bribing The President and Congress for profits. Corporations are paying for the government to give them those sweetheart deals that give the appearance of government being wasteful.

Of course, you elect those that make this possible. Your situation is your fault. Take responsibility.

Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Eight? Twelve? Sixteen?... Some are, most are not.

Vote Democrat for more of the same! Vote Republican for more of the same!

The Pentagon IS the economy in the US now and war creates the need. Take these things away and the scales will fall off our eyes and we will realize that we are an impoverished country, riddled with debt with a rotting infrastructure and no social safety net. We will have to face the fact that in the world of domestic consumer goods we are a country that no longer makes anything or produces anything. The skyscrapers are being built in Shanghai and Dubai not St. Louis or Philadephia. Without the military budget, defense contracts, and the wars we have nothing.

And now let's listen closely to right-wing pundits' arguments in favor of raising revenues to pay for the war. ...hello? ...hello? Gee, nobody on the right wants to talk about paying for it. Some ex-Walmart 'Weekend Warrior' gets a leg blown off up in Iraq and she's "made the ultimate sacrifice for our beloved country". Propose raising war taxes on the folks who HAVE most of this country's wealth and you're suddenly asking too much for this nation to be expected to bear.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

So which left wing hippie liberal peacenik said this? Abbie Hoffman? Tom Hayden? Jane Fonda?

Actually it was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Don't worry, conservo-turds, they're not going to raise your taxes to pay for it. Pay as you go? Don't be silly! We'll just pass the bill on the the next three or four generations.

I've never been keen on the idea of tying defense spending as a percentage of the nation's GDP. Yet we allow the DoD to frame the argument using what is illogical.

Defense should be tied to a threat and to capabilities to meet national security strategies. To think defense is underfunded if it doesn't consume 4 percent or 10 percent of the GDP is ludicrous.

Can you imagine the uproar if we used that same logic for education, medicare, social security, transportation?

One nation under god who's kid said beat your swords into plowshares.

There's a lot of Bush family members to support.