Personnel costs, including retirement and medical care for dependants, account for 55% of the US defense budget.

Golly Gee, the Chinese are Spending the Trade Surplus on Military!

What did you expect the Chinese to do do with their accumulated trade surplus? Another foreign policy success from the brain trust in Washington. It could have occurred to our rulers and masters that maybe, just maybe, it would have been a good idea to invest in factories all over Latin America and then we could have created wealthy trading partners and then we may not have had so many millions coming to the US to work. That way we still could go to Wal-Mart and our children would not be overly concerned with Bolivian aircraft carriers.

""The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

Pentagon details China's new military strategies
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 25, 2007

The Pentagon's forthcoming annual report on Chinese military power will reveal a growing threat from Beijing's new forms of power projection, including anti-satellite weapons and computer network attack forces.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that the report, scheduled for release today, shows how China "has steadily devoted increasing resources to their military."

According to defense officials familiar with the report, it also highlights new strategic missile developments, including China's five new Jin-class submarines, and states that Beijing continues to hide the true level of its military spending.

The officials also said that the report will detail how China is developing two new types of strategic forces that go beyond what nations have done traditionally using air, sea and land forces by aiming to knock out modern communications methods on which the U.S. military relies for advanced warfighting techniques.

First, U.S. intelligence officials estimate that by 2010 China's ASAT missiles will be capable of delivering a knockout blow to many U.S. military satellites. Second, China also is training large numbers of military computer hackers to deliver crippling electronic attacks on U.S. military and civilian computer networks.

Mr. Gates described this year's report as an honest assessment devoid of "arm-waving" and said, "I don't think it does any exaggeration of the threat."
"But it paints a picture of a country that is devoting substantial resources to the military and developing ... some very sophisticated capabilities."

More and more.