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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (175475)	9/30/2003 2:31:49 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578459

The criteria is that we don't have a sovereign enemy. That war is not imminent. That hostilities are not likely. That a serious challenger is not in the cards. Those are all facts are possible facts that factor in to the decision but they are not criteria for the decision. What level of defense spending would be enough and why? Yes, I do but you don't see it because you are so clouded by antiquated thinking. There can be no point but your own. There are many nations on this planet that have very minimal defense spending and do very well. But they do have that minimal level of defense spending. They also have other spending on armed force that isn't part of their defense budget. Also for many of them the reason why they can have such low defense budget is that we directly or indirectly protect them. We have no one else to protect our security and our interests around the world. In fact, our defense spending is greater than everyone else's combined. That statement really isn't true even though it isn't a lie. I've explained if before but basically in terms of purchasing power parity we don't spend more then everyone else combined. Also other countries throw a lot of resources at defense that are not in their defense budget. China is a good example of this. They put defense related funds in other budgets, plus they let the army run businesses and spend the profits, plus they draft people and pay them peanuts (even for China) using resources without actually using a lot of currency. North Korea is probably even worse, I'm not sure they even have a meaningful defense budget. The army just grabs the resources it needs. Its probably the same with some other third world dictatorships. Also we have chosen to trade money for lives when we fight. We could probably save some money if we didn't mind taking much higher casualties but that wouldn't be my choice. You're simply bandying about words. Not at all. The sunk costs are already spent. No way to avoid them. The non-defense spending is foreign aid, not defense spending. If you think we should spend less on foreign aid then you will probably find other people to agree with you but it isn't defense spending. Tim