What You Won't Hear Debated: The Trillion-dollar Misunderstanding

It's estimated that, for defense and national security, the U.S. spends about one trillion dollars a year -- which amounts to more than 80 percent of this year's expected deficit.

Mitt Romney is promising to spend even more -- an additional 2.1 trillion dollars over the next ten years. President Obama has called for some cuts, but is loath to challenge the premises that underlie those enormous expenses.

Why the caution? There are too many powerful interests at play -- what President Dwight Eisenhower long ago portrayed as the Military-Industrial complex -- interests sustained by that massive hemorrhage of American treasure. And those interests -- corporations, labor unions, the pentagon, think tanks, politicians -- use their massive clout to keep the torrent flowing.

To get a sense of that endless outflow, check out a site called Danger Zone Jobs. It's aimed at those -- mainly ex-military -- looking for work in America's sprawling "defense" establishment. To that end, the folks running DZJ regularly troll hundreds of major "defense" corporations to produce a list of potential job opportunities.

Barack Obama may talk about ending the surge in Afghanistan, pulling out of Iraq, and so on. But the list of new military contracts being let tells a very different story. 210 major U.S. companies are currently offering jobs in "Afghanistan, Kuwait, and other high risk areas."