[obrero]

> If you're going to lump together everything even tenuously connected to the military (all of NASA? all of the State Department? all of the Department of Energy?)

I very clearly said I am not going to lump together NASA and the DoE. Now you're claiming to people, who can clearly read my post, that I did lump them in, when I explicitly did not lump then it.

I do lump the State Department in with the military, as it's all more or less the same thing, beyond even that the CIA etc. routinely uses the State Department for cover ( http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/06/state_dept... ). Foreign embassies that have the ambassador go out and threaten the other state's executive with US military intervention can't really be considered on the domestic social spending side of this military/social breakdown that is being discussed.

> It's bigger than this other number

The point is that military spending was being presented as smaller than it is - by saying veteran's benefits were not part of military spending etc.