onlooker wrote:vtsnowedin wrote:It is absurd on the face of it.
Ten trillion over twenty years is five hundred billion a year which in some of the years in question was the entire defense budget which has fluctuated between about five hundred billion and seven hundred billion over that time frame.
Granted there is a lot of waste in the defense budget but it is not five hundred billion out of seven hundred billion in a year and certainly not five hundred out of five hundred.
That is the official figure, we don't know that they are really accurate. The point is the Military is such a potent and large part of Govt. Again, no allowance for corruption and Govt. cover up from some on this site. Oh a universally accepted fact is that the US spends more on military than anyone else. In fact, from a nice official conservative source "The US spends more on its military than the next 8 countries combined"
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-milit ... ing-2017-3
I've read elsewhere that the actual figure is more then the next thirteen countries combined but let's not quibble. The largest chunks of the military budget are well known. One and a half million personnel at an average paycheck per soldier comes up to a pretty solid figure. Also the planes and ships all have a budget that is pretty well known along with all the fuel , supplies and ammunition and food etc.
Of course the Defense department is not going to submit to a public audit as the information contained in it would be of use to our enemies.
And of course there are secret programs that have their budgets buried inside other line items as that is necessary to keep them secret.
For a bit more insight to what has really been spent you could start here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... eddbc21ac9The W.Post is not exactly Defense friendly so if they say it was spent it probably was.