Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
STING2 said:
As for taxpayer dollars, lets keep in mind that what the United States is currently spending on the US military, operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as aid to those countries, is currently a smaller percentage of US GDP than what was spent on Defense during the Peacetime of the 1980s or in any period before that going back to the start start of World War II.
i'll respond tomorrow, but for now, all i've got time for is this:
[q]Unforeseen Spending on Materiel Pumps Up Iraq War Bill
Senate to Take Up Measure as Military Fights to Keep Guns, Tanks Working
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 20, 2006; Page A01
With the expected passage this spring of the largest emergency spending bill in history, annual war expenditures in Iraq will have nearly doubled since the U.S. invasion, as the military confronts the rapidly escalating cost of repairing, rebuilding and replacing equipment chewed up by three years of combat.
The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise, from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found.
Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars. The invasion's "shock and awe" of high-tech laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft has long faded, but the costs of even those early months are just coming into view as the military confronts equipment repair and rebuilding costs it has avoided and procurement costs it never expected
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902594.html
[/q]
and let's keep in mind that the 1980s saw huge increases in military spending -- funny to call it "peacetime" -- especially on nuclear arms.
Bush's 2007 budget includes a request of $439 billion for defense -- that does not include the cost of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts, which have ranged from $4.4 - 7.1 billion per month since 2003.
current U.S. defense spending is more in real terms than during any of the Reagan years and surpassed only by spending at the end of World War Two in 1945 and 1946 and during the Korean War in 1952
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