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Defense Monitor Briefing, August 1995 (Excerpts)

" ...America's military budget is nearly as large as the military budgets of all the other nations in the world combined. It is more than three times the military budget of Russia, six times that of Japan, and eight times that of Germany. It is seventeen times more than the combined military spending of the six countries most often cited by the Pentagon as potential U.S. adversaries today: Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Libya, and Cuba. The United States will spend more money in three weeks than these 'enemies' together will spend in an entire year!

" ...Current spending on the military is four times as much as the government spends on housing, education, job training, community development, and the environment combined. It is sixteen times the amount spent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the main federal welfare program, which consumes just one percent of all federal outlays.

"...Recent public opinion surveys indicate that a majority of Americans are opposed to increasing military spending. They regard the military budget as an appropriate target for cuts to reduce the deficit.... A smaller U.S. military force structure based upon a more realistic assessment of security threats could produce budgetary savings of more than $500 billion below the spending plans of the President and the Congress over the next seven years."

(Publisher's comment: I highly recommend that you subscribe to this important journal. This particular issue has a "Guns vs. Butter" section which vividly illustrates what Michio Kushi means when he writes about "unhealthy" minds. Here is just one item: "For the total cost of the Clinton Administration's proposed FY 1996 military budget ($258 billion)...you could pay the operating costs for most of the nation's 6,500 hospitals for one year or fund Aid to Families with Dependent Children at its current funding level for 16 years.")

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