US military budget is three times more than announced

By Stephen Lendman

Trump's veto of the US fiscal year 2021, good to remember it's no longer 2020, 2021 that ends on September 30 this year. That's the way the fiscal year runs. It was a meaningless gesture. It had no meaning at all.

He wasted his time doing it and why he did it I really don't know. What was explained by the establishment media is just gibberish, rubbish, meaningless stuff, doesn't mean a thing, and what politicians in Congress say that's meaningless as well. Well, he did it for whatever reasons he had in mind. I mean if you have no reasons, he and other politicians invent them, and they do that all the time.

But the $740 billion NDAA isn't the whole story by any means. The US spends more on militarism, belligerence, so-called Homeland Security, and everything connected to it, including black budgets that can amount to maybe hundreds of billions of dollars. They're black, I don't know how much is in them, but I mean it's literally an open book - open checkbook, for whatever the US forces want. Whatever they want they get. It is printed up. The Fed prints it up, trillions of dollars.

Since around the mid-1990s, something like over $21 trillion supposedly for national defense went down a black hole of waste, fraud, and abuse. It went for so-called defense. That's all about offense, militarism, and belligerence. $21 trillion unaccounted for? $740 billion is a pocket change compared to that. This is the way the US operates.

Money is printed up in any amounts that corporate America wants, mainly the military-industrial security complex, Wall Street, Big Pharma, these interests. They get whatever they want.

One more thing, that 740 billion for the current fiscal year is maybe a third of what officially will be spent, which probably exceeds $2 trillion in the current fiscal year. But you only hear about 740 billion, about one-third of it.

The US spends as much or more on militarism, belligerence, and all the rest, than the rest of the world combined at a time when its only enemies are invented. Why are they invented? Because there are no real ones. So to justify what's unjustifiable. They invent the enemies for all of the stuff they do against them.

You know war, hot wars, wars by other means. It is done to Iran since 1979. It never attacked its territory, except by cyberwar assassinations and related dirty tricks, but never attacked the Iranian territory, never attacked the territory of Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries on its target list for regime change, not Russia since the 1917 revolution.

There was an attack on Russian territory back then when the Bolsheviks were around. US Marines invaded Russia. Few people realized that. That's in US history. You probably could read it in the history books, in the US history books.

It never attacked the Chinese mainland I'm aware of. There was conflict around Taiwan. China was an ally during World War Two. So why would you attack them? But the military spending and everything else the US does is for nefarious interests at the expense of world peace, stability, the rule of law, and governance of by and for everybody equitably.

These are no democracy, the way it should be. These are notions the US opposes and doesn't tolerate anywhere, not at home or abroad. When a country like Venezuela, which has a model of democracy and wants to be left alone not bothering anybody. The US going all out to topple the government to reinstall a fascist tyranny, that existed before the Bolivarian Revolution took hold and Hugo Chavez was elected in December 1998.

Anyway, that's what the budget is all about. It's a rubber stamp. It's automatic. The President vetoes it, which is almost unheard of. It's routine to override it and get into an accidental law, which I guess it is right now because at the House overrode the veto the Senate has now overridden the veto. So it is US law, and it will be enforced as far ahead as anyone could imagine.

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Stephen Lendman, born in 1934 in Boston, started writing on major world and national issues began in summer 2005. In early 2007, radio hosting followed. Lendman now hosts the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network three times weekly. Distinguished guests are featured. Listen live or archived. Major world and national issues are discussed. Lendman is a 2008 Project Censored winner and 2011 Mexican Journalists Club international journalism award recipient.

Lendman recorded this article for Press TV website.

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