even Obama doesn't know

[ensho]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA12Df01.html


Empire of bases 2.0


The United States has 460 bases overseas! It has 507 permanent bases! What is the US doing with more than 560 foreign bases? Why does it have 662 bases abroad? Does the United States really have more than 1,000 military bases across the globe?

In a world of statistics and precision, a world in which "accountability" is now a Washington buzzword, a world where all information is available at the click of a mouse, there's one number no American knows. Not the president. Not the Pentagon. Not the experts. No one.

-snip-

Today, according to the Pentagon's published figures, the American flag flies over 750 US military sites in foreign nations and US territories abroad. This figure does not include small foreign sites of less than 10 acres (4 hectares) or those that the US military values at less than US$10 million. In some cases, numerous bases of this type may be folded together and counted as a single military installation in a given country. A request for further clarification from the Department of Defense went unanswered.

-long snip on other types of uncounted bases including 'black ops' bases-

Like all empires, the US military's empire of bases will someday crumble. These bases, however, are not apt to fall like so many dominos in some silver-screen last-stand sequence. They won't, that is, go out with the "bang" of futuristic Alamos, but with the "whimper" of insolvency.
-snip-
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solution - take away the Pentagon's money supply.

if D.C. had the actual guts to do that our Barons would probably financially support the pentagon's bloody hands.