COMMENTS:
Voted : 10 billion dollars
i don't think the u.s military budget is upwards of a trillion. i think it's maybe half that. still though.
yeah, so? you don't need a massive budget to make dirty bombs. and you can make money selling the nuclear technology to another country or terrorist group. i don't think their military budget is really relevant in this case dude. nuclear weapons are in a totally different league than having fighter jets or ships.
Voted : 2 billion dollars
Guessing low, but not too...
Voted : 1 billion dollars
Whatever Jimmy carter can donate to them.
What kev said.
I don't blame you (or anyone) for thinking our annual budget for defense spending is roughly half-a-trillion dollars. I should've worded my contention a bit differently: that the total annual military expenditures of the United States amount to somewhere in the vicinity of a trillion dollars. But the administration says our defense budget is only about half that, so what's going on?
The administration only transmits to the general public the money allocated to the Department of Defense, which is a grossly incomplete representation of our ACTUAL military budget. For example, the budget for the Department of Homeland Security is not included in the White House's "total" accounting for annual defense spending, nor is the FBI counter-terrorism budget, nor the amount of money spent by the State Department on the police, military, and intelligence capabilities of allied countries, nor the tens of billions of dollars devoted to the Department of Veteran's Affairs and the Department of the Treasury's contribution to the Military Retirement Fund -- plus the interest payments on the cost of past wars, etc.., etc...
Here's a link explaining this in more detail: independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941
- and here is the author's breakdown:
National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2006 (billions of dollars):
- Department of Defense 499.4
- Department of Energy (nuclear weapons & environ. cleanup) 16.6
- Department of State 25.3
- Department of Veterans Affairs 69.8
- Department of Homeland Security 69.1
- Department of Justice (1/3 of FBI) 1.9
- Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund) 38.5
- National Aeronautics & Space Administration (1/2 of total) 7.6
- Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays 206.7
-->Total: 934.9
(Source
I think their military budget is very relevant if we're so scared of them manufacturing live nuclear weapons. Their limited financial resources reduce their overall threat in the nuclear arena. International terrorists bent on acquiring, manufacturing, or assembling nuclear weapons have a few more desirable options open to them than the country of Iran.
Regarding dirty bombs, you're right about them being fairly easy and cheap to create. You don't even need plutonium or uranium for radioactive material. But when one gets down to this much simpler incarnation of violent technology one realizes how misguided it is to address terrorism as if it is localized geographically. This is why the idea of the nation-state (i.e. Iran) as a bounded reservoir for 'terrorism' is completely out of date.
Voted : 20 billion dollars
Just a guess.
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