Excerpt
From
The Sorrows of Empire:
- The 725 U.S. military bases acknowledged by the Department of Defense do not include the many used for communications espionage, control of the world's oil supply, or those that are simply too embarrassing for the government to speak about openly (such as the fourteen permanent bases being built in Iraq).
- The United States maintains about 347,000
soldiers, airmen, and marines at military bases in 140 of 189 member states of the United Nations.
- The American military budget is so large that the next-highest military budget in the world-
Russia's-is only fourteen percent of our own.
- Ninety-three percent of the American budget dedicated to international affairs is allocated to the military and only seven percent to the State Department.
- The Congressional Budget Office projects federal deficits over the next five years of more than $1 trillion, on top of an already existing government debt in February 2003 of $6.4 trillion. Military operations in Iraq so far have cost $143 billion; reconstruction will run from between $50 and $100 billion.