{"id":336,"date":"2004-06-10T10:01:37","date_gmt":"2004-06-10T17:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/wp2\/uncategorized\/money-well-spent-not\/"},"modified":"2004-06-10T10:01:37","modified_gmt":"2004-06-10T17:01:37","slug":"money-well-spent-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/letters-to-the-editor\/money-well-spent-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Money Well Spent — \r\n\r\nNOT!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Report: World military spending nears Cold War levels<\/a><\/p>\n

World <\/p>\n

military spending surged during 2003, reaching $956 billion<\/b>, nearly half of it by the United States as it paid for missions in <\/p>\n

Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror [according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute]. …<\/p>\n

Military spending <\/p>\n

rose by 11 percent<\/b>, which the group called a remarkable increase. The amount was up 18 percent from 2001.<\/p>\n

The $956 billion spent <\/p>\n

on defense costs worldwide corresponded to 2.7 percent of the world’s gross domestic product<\/b>, according to the annual report.<\/p>\n

”It’s very close to the Cold War peak in 1987,” said institute researcher Elisabeth Skoens, who co-authored the report. …<\/p>\n

The United States led the world in defense spending, accounting for 47 percent of the total<\/b>[mjh: !], followed by Japan with 5 <\/p>\n

percent and Britain, France and China with 4 percent each.<\/p>\n

So the world (the US) is spending nearly as much today on <\/p>\n

defense as we did at the height of the Cold War. Then, our enemy was a superpower with massive weapons of destruction and a huge army. <\/p>\n

Now, our enemy uses box cutters and donkey carts. Something’s not quite right. <\/p>\n

Could it be that the Military-Industrial Complex has <\/p>\n

seized the opportunity to continue to grow fat on fear? Are you safer than you were 4 years ago? mjh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Report: World military spending nears Cold War levels World military spending surged during 2003, reaching $956 billion, nearly half of it by the United States as it paid for missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror [according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute]. … Military spending rose by 11 percent, which the … Continue reading Money Well Spent — <\/p>\n

NOT!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters-to-the-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}