Gotta Support the Troops?

What in the world is the US government doing?  Seriously.

China's government is literally doing business deals every day, purchasing assets and buying up stakes in Canadian oil sands, a Guinean iron ore mine, oil fields in Angola and Uganda, an Argentinian oil company, and a major Australian coal-bed methane gas company just to name a few.

Meanwhile, the US government announced a major international investment this week.  What was it?  The US announced it is going to build an $12 billion "super base" on the island of Guam.

So, while China is making investments in real revenue and profit producing assets the US is going to sink $12 billion into building yet another military base.  A base that will produce $0 revenue and only have massive ongoing costs.

This in addition to the "enduring" bases the US has in Iraq including:

• Balad Air Base, some 40 miles north of Baghdad, where two million cubic feet of concrete has been laid for runways and parking aprons for C-5 and C-130 airplanes and for as many as 120 helicopters. Facilities will accommodate 25,000 troops in its 15 square miles;
• Al Assad Air Base, 180 miles west of Baghdad and ten miles from the Syrian border. Covering 19 square miles, it is home to 17,000 U.S. military and civilians;
• Ali Air Base at Tallil, between Baghdad and Basra
• Al Qayyarah Air Base in the north near Mosul

And that's in addition to the 700 to 800 military bases worldwide with US military personnel in 156 countries and US Military bases in 63 countries.

These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide.

Total return on this massive investment: $0.  Actually, far worse than that, the costs go into the trillions of dollars per year - a case can even be made that every dollar from income tax in the US goes to support the military.

And people in the USA are wondering why the country is bankrupt?

Imagine if those trillions had been used as investments into 156 different countries to build infrastructure.  There wouldn't be too many people burning American flags if that were the case.

And just who is America preparing to fight with these hundreds of bases, millions of troops and trillions of dollars worth of bombs, bombers and bullets?  Some guys in caves in Afghanistan?  Seems like a bit of overkill, no?

Perhaps the icing on the cake is that the one man responsible for this giant military that spends more on defense (offense) than all other nations on earth combined and that is currently occupying and "at war" in Afghanistan, Iraq, building billion dollar bases in Guam, operating concentration camps in places such as Cuba, killing civilians from unmanned drones every day in Pakistan and threatening war with Iran is Barack Obama.  He won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Comments

[ralph]

Fantastic post!!! What a joke US military spending is. THE ONLY RETURN ON OUR INVESTMENT WILL BE SOMEONES BLOOD. Keep up the good work.

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[Laurence Hunt]

Jeff,

Seems that one of your readers is suggesting replica handbags as a preferential investment to military expenditures.

Hmmm. He might have a point.

Then again, there are replica watches!

So many choices....

[Samdaman]

It's fitting that Obama won the Nobel prize seeing as how Nobel acquired his wealth from the sale of munitions. Orwellian enough for ya? LOL.

[Bootsy]

I just love $ubsidizing the defense of our rich allies(who then hammer us on trade) especially since WW2's been over for 65 years and the Korean War's been over for 58 years. Please show me in the U.S. Constitution where it states that the Federal government is 'spose to have over 700 military bases in over 140 foreign countries?! When will Republicans, Conservatives and the Tea Party ever realize that the military budget is bankrupting our country just as much as the entitlements are? Meanwhile, the ever-growing, American Welfare-Warfare State marches forward regardless of who's in power.

[Snide]

Sounds like they are closing a base in Okinawa and relocating to Guam.

What are the ramifications of the Okinawa closure?

Thanks for your continued interest in the whole truth

[Transparency]

The One World Empire people (UN Agenda21+++) as I understand it will be using the US military as the world thugs to invade and kill any oposition to their agenda (if they succeed). There will be no other blue collar jobs for american kids, but mercenary (US soldiers pimped to the New World Order). And america, like a crack whore, will need the work to support the national debt of treasury bills after the FRN looses its world reserve currency status to china or the IMF, their plan is moving forward in fits and starts, and can still be sidetracked by getting the word out.