Because stat boy, they are buying our stuff. It isn't cheap.

You know you're just driving him to more and more Wiki C&P, right? :rofl:

That is part of the fun. I'm surprised he hasn't written a X5 wiki he is there so much :) I've also seen nobody put so much faith in a completely public repository.

And you are putting your faith in what? If you think that China and Russia are spending more than they say, then of course you must have some kind of evidence of this, right? Even the most far out conspiracy theories have minimal evidence in the form of witnesses. If your conspiracy theory is true, then there must be someone who is claiming this and has a reason.

But I can find not a single thing anywhere which supports your conspiracy theory on this. Not even some raging lunatic who claims this. Not any former Russian or Chinese government officials that claim to have witnessed this. Nothing at all.

The Flat Earth Society has more supporting data.

I put my faith in logic and understanding it isn't as cut and dry as "eww our big bad government....eww". I don't do conspiracy theories, the word conspiracy means 'more then one agent working towards a goal...'. At every turn you question everything YOUR government does, yee of little faith.

In my opinion:

It is great to question the government, I'm all for that, but not for the sake of questioning it. I'm glad we have huge military spending, we also have a pretty good quality of life and things come relatively easy for the masses in the USA. This is also a country that offers amazing freedoms and superior defense. It is one of the few countries in the WORLD where you can come from nothing and achieve everything. I'm all for that. Is there corruption? Sure. Are there problems? Definitely. Could it be better? Certainly. Does it make it any less great? No. Does it warrant constant questioning of every single practice, great and small? No. And the US will ALWAYS have enemies outside and inside its borders regardless of policy or leadership.

I for one find it amazing to live in a country where you can profit from your work, name your own goal, work towards your own goals and have a volunteer force protect you from outside enemies.

BTW: this will be my mantra most of the time when you quote a wiki/liberal press on the US government. Others can feel free to cut & paste :)

Piss and moan, all the time.
 

Good points Wagner. It's easy for one to sit back and do nothing but slam our government while they take advantage of the freedoms provided through others sacrifices. Those who are most critical are the least likely to provide any means of support to the continued freedoms they take for granted. While we protect their freedoms it's best they stay out of our way and keep their whining on some liberal boards somewhere else where misery loves company. Don't distract us, we have a job to do....for you too.

As long as that man and woman aren't Eric and Rosie, we're good! :rofl:

A large part of that "budget" is pensions, that's not included in foreign budgets - personnally, I think it's time to re-merge the Air Force back into the Army - both have too much 'deadwood' flag rank and are prone to "academy cronyism" and are more 'politician' than warrior - in the last 4yrs has been a testament to failed leadership in the miltary (BOTH Bush presidents have had some really bad advisors) - Who can remember the "100hr war" slogan they used as an excuse to call it all off before the fighting men finished their job? - Iraq should have been disarmed then, and Saddam arrested and tried for war crimes - But everyone(Iraqis that thought we were going to fulfill our promises) was left to killed, tortured, and ??? by Saddam - any wonder why the Iraqi people were so slow to believe what we say? - Now they are finally getting a sense of "nation" again, we finally have a "warrior" fighting there, and most of our politicians are calling for our retreat - is it any wonder why we are distrusted around the world?

As far as Russia goes, we missed a historic opportunity to help them emerge as a true friend - trying to change 80yrs of communism is not an overnight thing - the road is not "perfect" - people forget, neither was ours - and you don't get to where we are without going thru the same growing pains - not everything can be done by our standards of today - ie, if OSHA was around, we would never grown and advanced thru the industrial revolution, not to mention many other periods of advances and development - Instead of helping and understanding that some 'eggs' are going to be broken to 'undo' what's been done before, most of what we heard was criticism - a real shame IMHO

Our defense budget is the highest because we can afford it.

Enough said.