What exactly does the $450 billion dollar a year Defense Budget pay for if not the Troops?

[Toots]

The USA budgets more money every year for the military than the next ten largest countries combined. Why is there a need to spend off-budget another hundred billion or so just for Iraq. Do people here know there are over one hundred thousand Private Contractors in Iraq? How do they get paid do you think? Since there is no way Congress would ever include in the National Budget money for them it needs to come from unaccountable off-budget "Emergency Supplemental Spending" Tell me why we can't pay for the troops through the normal means especially since we spend more on them than most other countries combined. The reason this "Emergency Spending" is required is for War Profiteering and no other reason. The questions to ask is who in the Democratic Party is benefiting from this? That is why this money which can not be accounted for is being raised and spent. It certainly is not for food and clothing and bullets and armament for our troops because that comes from the Defense Budget. Why are so many billions just missing? Why did we send four huge cargo jets filled to the brim with pallets of bundled hundred dollar bills? Why does no one know what happened to those billions and billions of cash money? Should we not ask these questions. Someone is not telling the whole truth here and it isn't just the Republicans..

[whistle]

1. Well, excellent question for which we will never get a straight answer

...so let's go back in time and see what a real general would say:

<snip>
WAR IS A RACKET
by Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient:

Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC

Chapter One

WAR IS A RACKET

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce , their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.
<MORE>

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[donco6]

2. Capital Expenditures. R&D for new Death Machines.

That sort of thing.

Oh, and the under-the-table payola, of course.

It's interesting that, as a school district administrator, I have to document every single penny of federal dollars I spend. With NCLB, there are so many convoluted rules on set-asides and things I can and can't spend the money on. I'm audited EVERY YEAR by an outside auditor who is required to test these programs. If we fail in one single area, we get written up to the feds and our board and the State Board.

But the military can ship pallets and pallets of money overseas and no one bats an eye.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. Happy fun books on this subject.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x5336

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=209x5334

[Blue_Tires]

4. oh, i get it...you hate america!

how dare you ask a question like that which might make people actually THINK!:think: :sarcasm:

[Zywiec]

5. You can get a few of these...

I think the B-2's are almost a billion each after all the production costs are factored in.