by James Glaser
February 10, 2005

I can tell we are still free because our government still tells us what they are doing, even if they are not real prompt at getting the information out. I know George Bush and his administration are really into secrets, but Washington is so complex they can't hide everything... at least they can't yet.

Washington doesn't make it easy to find things, but if you dig and search, there is a lot of information about what they are doing in our name and also what they are spending our money on.

On Monday the New York Times reported that our scientists "have begun designing a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be sturdier and more reliable and to have longer lives, federal officials and private experts say."

Yes it is true that Bush, Cheney and the rest of the War Party go nuts any time they think another nation is even thinking about nuclear weapons. Heck we were even willing to sacrifice thousands of American Troops, because we THOUGHT Iraq might have or at least be on the path to, having a nuclear weapon. Of course we now know that Iraq had neither a weapon nor a weapon program.

Yes, we did waste those troops and their deaths and maiming is a real shame on our government even if they won't admit it. Now Bush and his people claim almost 1,500 Americans had to die and over 11,000 were wounded, so that the Iraqi people could vote to become a Muslim law ruled country. No, they didn't say it quite like that, but that is what our brave young men and women died for, because there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction and there never was in Bush's time frame and there was no real threat to our country.

In 1970 we signed a treaty with Russia, China, the UK, and France called the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We promised to give up our nuclear weapons if other countries promised not to get them. Most countries signed, but we didn't give up ours and so countries like Pakistan, India and Israel went about getting their own.

We still threaten anyone WE DON"T LIKE, if they start a nuclear weapons program, but we looked the other way for these three.

Right now we are telling Iran and kind of telling North Korea that they can't have this type of weapon, mean while we have 10,000 nukes, way more than we would need to destroy the whole planet and now Bush is pushing for research to make a whole new class of these weapons.

No, it makes no sense to me either. If America is still building new models of this type of weapon, why wouldn't every other nation want the same weapon to defend themselves with?

Like I said at the beginning of this column, our government tells us what they are doing, they just aren't very fast in doing it. Here are some things I found though while looking up what we spent on armor in Iraq. I couldn't find that, but I did find some interesting things.

We sold $142 billion dollars worth of weapons around the world between 1992 and 2001. That was the last years I could find out about.

In 1999 we supplied arms or military technology to more than 92% of the conflicts of that year.

The Red Cross has estimated that one out of every two casualties of war is a civilian.

Half of the world's governments spend more on defense than on health care.

The United Nations found there are over 300,000 child soldiers in 30 wars going on now.

The Center for International Policy estimates that 80% of US arms exports to the developing world, go to non-democratic regimes.

The US government is training soldiers in upwards of 70 countries at any given time.

Here is a very interesting one.... If you were to count by one number every second without stopping, it would take you 11-and a half days to reach one million and about 32 years to reach one billion.

Iceland has no military expenditure.

We don't have a perfect country, but we do have a pretty honest one. It isn't easy to find everything out you want to, I was looking for what we spent on armor in Iraq and couldn't find it, but I bet it will be published in a year or so. It is hard to understand just how big our government is but spend some time researching and you will be amazed how much information is out there. Sometimes it is hard to make heads or tails of what they are doing, but you can pick out bits and pieces.

As long as we have an idea of what Washington is doing, we will be free. If George Bush can make everything a secret like he has been trying to do, we will be in big trouble. We can start counting down his days now and I don't think he has enough time or enough power to hide everything before he is finished with this term.

I don't want you to think it is just Bush and the Republicans, when the Democrats are in they don't want us to know what they are doing either. That is why they say a dictatorship is so efficient. Nobody can ask questions. As long as we know what is going on and we can ask questions, we will remain free to some extent. If we lose that information about what Washington is really doing, we will also lose our freedom.