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Glenn Greenwald notes Global Security's new report on military spending:

Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends. "Only" about $150 billion of the total U.S. amount is attributable to the two active wars we're fighting, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, even if one wants to excludes those amounts, the basic picture remains the same.

But he notes that all the major candidates for president -- including on the Democratic side -- talk about increasing defense funding in one respect or another.

It is, of course, possible to argue that the U.S. should maintain the strongest military force in the world but that we need not spend more than the rest of the world combined, nor increase what we spend every year, yet those issues can't even be broached in good company.

What's more, we're paying for the biggest military budget in the history of the world -- and, yes, fighting a war of choice -- on the national credit card. Whatever you think about our national security needs, it seems to me that the current process is simply unsustainable. And that does need to be a topic for discussion.