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Actually, I shudder at them.
Groovy US Budget Spending Diagram

$399 billion on military spending in 2004 versus $383 billion on non-military spending?

Do you all live in old tanks and missile silos in America?

From the Office of Management & Budget, Mid-Session Review for Fiscal 2006.

Budget Document

Excerpted from table S-2 Discretionary Totals, Page 24

Projected Spending Billions of Dollars

2006
Depat. of Defense 419
Homeland Security 32
AllOther Spending 388

2007
Depat. of Defense 443
Homeland Security 34
AllOther Spending 388

2008
Depat. of Defense 462
Homeland Security 35
AllOther Spending 388

2009
Depat. of Defense 489
Homeland Security 37
AllOther Spending 388

2010
Depat. of Defense 492
Homeland Security 39
AllOther Spending 388

It works out to about $1500-$1700 a taxpayer (on average) to support the military. While I would like to see more of my taxes going to programs I care more about, I don't think $1500 a year (on average) is too much to spend on the military.

I wonder how much Guam, the second greatest country in the world, spends on their military?

Guam!

It's important to note that this doesn't include mandatory spending such as Social Security and Medicare, which I'm fairly certain totals more than half the total budget on its own. It doesn't seem to me that weird at all that a country would spend 25% to 33% of its total budget on defense and security. That seems to me a fairly major function of government. I'd like there to be more funds for other stuff as well (education and housing, for example), but the solution to that seems to be raise the total budget rather than re-allocating it.

And Cobie, Guam isn't an independent country.

Australia, however, according to my quick calculation, spends about $900 to $1000 per person on its military.

True, but there seems a lot of emphasis on 'pet projects' and advanced weapons systems with limited value and not on the troops and the operating budget itself. There's a supplemental funding measure outside of this in 2006 for additional costs of operating an army in the field.

Smart budgeting would have anticipated this and put enough money into a contingency over the past 10 years or so.

Also those figures are not constant dollars, Ie non-defense discretionary funding is going to shrink by 8-10% in the next 4 years while DoD will increase by 8-10% after taking account inflation.

So the question is 'bang for the buck' within the defense budget and also what programs must have been foregone elsewhere, just like my comic book budget come to think of it.

The "pet projects" problem plagues every aspect of the budget, though, and isn't really affected by defense versus non-defense spending.

*choke*

Do they need a youthful freedom fighter?

Maybe. But I should warn the country that occupies them spent $399 billion on military spending in 2004.

The truly odd numbers are the ones that show that the US spends more on their military than every other single country in the world.

These numbers turn my stomach. How I long for those heady 90's days of shrinking military budgets and closing bases. And what kind of conflict is tailor-made for the continuing success of the military-industrial complex? A nebulous, never-ending, never-victorious War Against Terror. We need more disposable million-dollar cruise missiles...t

Just in case, I don't think Australia's record of wasting money on stupid military crap that doesn't work properly anyway is that grand.
I just couldn't find as spiffy a chart.