RE: ...phantoms…?

I’ll be frank, Young Man. The figures speak for themselves:

Summarizing some key details from chapter 5 of the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2010 Year Book on Armaments, Disarmament
and International Security for 2008:

World military expenditure in 2009 is estimated to have reached $1.531 trillion
in current dollars;

This represents a 6 per cent increase in real terms since 2008 and a 49 per cent
increase since 2000;

This corresponds to 2.7 per cent of world gross domestic product (GDP), or
approximately $225 for each person in the world;

The USA with its massive spending budget, is the principal determinant of the
current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for just under
half of the world total, at 46.5% of the world total;

SIPRI has commented in the past on the increasing concentration of military
expenditure, i.e. that a small number of countries spend the largest sums. This
trend carries on into 2009 spending. For example,

The 15 countries with the highest spending account for over 82% of the total;
The USA is responsible for 46.5 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by
the China (6.6% of world share), France (4.2%), UK (3.8%), and Russia (3.5%):

http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#WorldMilitarySpending

In reply to this, I expect to be condemned as anti-US, anti-NATO - to reconfirm: the dedicated men and women who serve in the trenches for both these institutions and the armies of workers employed by military hardware makers do so largely with impeccable loyalty - it is their great misfortune, that their services are under the control of Global Oligarchs, loyal to no nation, religion, ethnicity, nor ideology - they are intent only on advancing an agenda of global hegemony to protect and extend their commercial enterprises and they hold no compunction about using any means to do so; most expeditiously, control of the intelligence networks and military industrial complex, through which they also profit in the extreme.

3 things to never forget:

1. “Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state.” - James Jesus Angelton - Director of CIA Counter Intelligence (1954-74)

2. “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” - William Colby - Director of the CIA (1973-76)

3. “...military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” - Henrey Kissinger, National Security Advisor under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

fearnotruth, - “Actually it’s the global finance oligarchy who owes everyone…..”

-

I’ll be frank and hope you appreciate it.

You’re chasing phantoms and ignoring tangible realities.

RE: Americans owe…

WRONG

Actually it’s the global finance oligarchy who owes everyone - these awful wars
need to be shut down while infrastructure and social services the world over
built up - it’s no mystery how it works: Gutle Schnapper, wife of Mayer Amschel
Rothschild, was once quoted as saying: “If my sons did not want war, there
would be none.”

“in WWI and WWII, the super rich controlling the US and the West got to
steal much of the property and wealth of the defeated Ottoman Turks, Germans
and Japanese.

That’s why those wars and all the others (past, present and future) have been
and are fought.  Dominating greed for more and more profits and gains
prompts the big money interests to promote, encourage and agitate wars on
and on. “

from - http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1219126140.php

Americans owe the Afghan people their lives.  Walking away from that debt because it’s too hard or too expensive is grossly self-serving and shamefully reprehensible.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed his government has
been in informal talks with the Taliban on securing peace in war-weary Afghanistan “for quite
some time”—the latest in a series of high-level acknowledgments of contacts with the
insurgent group.

Never forget, Gates and Brzezinski virtually coaxed into being so-called Islamic Extremism.
Even before the former USSR invaded in 1979, CIA operatives were in Afghanistan stirring up
trouble. And, they’ve never let up, taking it to every nation in the region. There’s plenty of evidence to support this.

Moreover, rarely is it cited in the MSM that the Taliban offered to arrest and turn over Osama
bin Laden, shortly after 9/11, if they could be shown evidence that he actually plotted the 9/11
attack.

Clearly that was a gambit the Neocons weren’t ready for; shutting down the global war of terror
before it could really get rolling; no way. OBL is a legend whose death will be acknowledged
when the time is right.

As for the Taliban, who knows what mission the spooks among them are tasked to do.
Whatever it is, don’t count on any sort of legitimate peace any time soon. Not what the boys in
the shadows want, not in the least. And Karzai had better get a security team he can trust.
Smart move to kick out Black Water.

Talking to the Taliban, who constitute the largest segment of the Afghans’ activists, is what the assholes American political leaders should have done nine years ago before embarking on this savage terrorist war in Afghanistan that claimed the lives of thousands of American young men and women and many other thousands of Afghans, most of them civilians, not to mention the billions of dollars this war has cost American tax-payers and had no doubt, along with the other savage war in Iraq, led to the financial ruin of America.

Bush and gang who were responsible for this savage war must be hanged in public after a short symbolic trial like the one they did to Saddam Husein. Any thing short of this will leave America open to the hostilities and attacks of the Afghans for generations to come!

Talking is preferable to fighting.  A lesson worth learning amongst most regulars on this Web space.

“Peace talks” means “let’s see who can we lure or buy out so we can install a more efficient puppet regime.”

Anybody actually believe this bilge, coming, as it does, just before the election?  That’s right, dummies, vote for the Democrats, the party of peace.  Just remember what Gates really said: we’re never getting out of Afghanistan.