peace is not presidential:
Since President Bush came into office in 2001, the Pentagon’s budget has increased by more than one-third. The $481 billion proposed for 2008 - the $459 billion appropriations plus the nuclear weapons programs of the Department of Energy - is a jump of more than 10% over current spending. To be clear, this is a huge figure even before factoring in the costs of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in under the “Global War on Terror.” A recent analysis of the emergency supplemental budgets to pay for the war by the Congressional Research Service finds that (so far) a total of another $607 billion has been spent since September 11, 2001.
(...) The United States is currently spending more on the military than at the height of the Reagan military build-up (when we had a nuclear-armed superpower rival) or during the Vietnam or Korean wars. Thanks to the Bush administration, the United States now spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world spends collectively, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.