2.16 billion in US defense funds go to the Taliban

[Aerows]

I've posted this before, but it makes me so angry that we are even DARING to discuss cutting SS and Medicare, yet things like this go on:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-07-25/world/afghanistan.us.funds.taliban_1_source-task-force-trucking?_s=PM:WORLD

We fund our own damn enemies abroad, then talk about cutting programs that we, the US people have paid into and that will harm the most vulnerable among us.

Do you see where the problem is with our budget? I do. We fund our own damn enemies because we have no damn idea how defense money is being spent (wasted and thrown away).

[DURHAM D]

1. I guess that is why we are in Afghanistan still - we are trying to "claw" it back. nt

[Aerows]

2. We are there

to make defense contractors wealthy, so they then turn around and make campaign donations. That's why.

Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires for a reason. From Alexander the Great, to the British Empire to the Soviet Union - all tried, and failed. I have no idea why the US thinks we will be any different. We won't be because we have no idea what we are attempting to accomplish over there except trying to protect/build an oil pipeline.

That's why we are there, and corporations don't pay for that presence - we do.

[Old and In the Way]

4. Our Defense Department provides the 'muscle' for Big Oil's bottom line.

If we'd properly account for the expenditures made on behalf of Big Oil, we'd easily justify alternative energy sources to get independent from our oil addiction. If we had used the 2 Trillion dollars spent on Afghanistan/Iraq and Defense budgets to invest in alternative/renewable energies and a post-oil infrastructure that created jobs as well as make us independent on the energy geopolitics at play, we'd have no debt crisis and nor an economy on the brink of total meltdown. I truly believe that the stolen election in 2000 is why we are now where we are in 2011.

[WinkyDink]

5. Treasure and poppy fields; never forget the poppy fields.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Hard to justify a $680+BB/year defense budget if you have no "enemies".

A few billion spent on enemy enhancement is a small price to pay to keep the MIC budget intact.