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FirmhandKY -> RE: Troops Out of Iraq by August 2010? (1/28/2010 6:41:53 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydawg
quote:
ORIGINAL: AnimusRex
quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
My question was whether or not your were intentionally using hyperbole as a rhetorical technique, or if you actually thought you were being historically and factually accurate.
If you are intentionally using hyperbole, then fine. If you think you are being accurate, then I have to disagree with most (if not all) of your assumptions, predicates and definitions.
The future estimates of the number of countries and bases was sarcastic conjecture;
the number of bases we have currently is accurate (about 1,000 scattered across the globe) Alternet, says 737, so you are overstating by 25% http://www.alternet.org/story/47998
The number of nations we currently are at war with is accurate (A-stan, P-Stan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia) Actually we are not at war with any of these countries
The history of our battles with Muslims was exaggerated- we have fought minor skirmishes with them, but never allowed it to become an existential threat.
So overall, I stand by the post. But would be interested to hear any corrections. contrary to what all women say, I am not a God, I just act like one in bed.
quote:
Original: AnimusRex
Currently we spend almost a trillion dollars a year on defense and security, or 1/2 of our tax revenue.
2010 Military Budget: $685.1 billion (including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)
2009 Military Budget: $494.3 billion (not including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)
You can add a lot of different "things" to those numbers, if you want to get up to a trillion, but, again, my comments were that you weren't being precise in you comments.
2010 Military Budget as a percentage of Federal taxes collected: 28% (The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues.)
quote:
Original: AnimusRex
At what point will the cost of feeding this Leviathan devour our Treasury and bankrupt us?
One view:
Expert opinion varies wildly on the relevance of U.S. war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to the health of the U.S. economy. At the most basic level, economists disagree whether these wars will have a positive or negative long-term economic impact. Total military spending (including spending on support and operations inside Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as operations tied to the “Global War on Terrorism,” all of which are budgeted separately from the U.S. defense budget) remains relatively modest compared to historical levels. During World War II, defense spending rose to levels as high as 37.8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Even including war-spending supplements and terror-war expenditures on top of the normal defense budget, today that number comes to about 6.2 percent of GDP.
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Even considering the military budget and war spending together, however, total U.S. expenditures remain modest compared to historical levels in wartime. Shortly before the Vietnam War, in 1962, defense spending alone tallied 9.3 percent of GDP. During World War II expenditures were higher still; in 1944 the defense budget peaked at 37.8 percent of GDP. Even after recent increases, defense spending today comes to about 3.7 percent of GDP—and the combined total, even after including both war-spending supplements and “Global War on Terror” expenditures, comes to 6.2 percent of GDP. Still, today’s spending represents an increase since before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when defense spending tallied roughly 3 percent of GDP.
Graphically:
[image]http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/6100/federalspending12850.jpg[/image]
[image]http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/111/defensegdp.gif[/image]
It's not Defense spending that will kill our economy.
Firm
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