Comments on: Corpse of sanity exhumed, raped and buggered

By: Confused

Confused — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 08:55:00 +0000

I'm not sure you can put hardware, or personnel into the mix for a number of reasons:

1) All parties incur hardware and personnnel costs. Those costs are not transparent, nor necessarily consistent with contribution. [I.e. the French may spend 50% more on Officer training, US tanks may be 25% cheaper than British ones]
2) Hardware (such as tanks, planes) and personnel, even though they may be based in Germany, for example, are also part of their respective militaries, not just Nato.

For example: British tanks and vehicles and personnel from Germany have gone out to Iraq. The large German hospital (whose name escapes me) is not a Nato facility, but used for all US military personnel in operations in Eurasia.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 07:43:00 +0000

True. Right, so back to my original claim, or something approximately like it, then.

This is proper research, this is.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:48:00 +0000

Wouldn’t of thought so, $285m don’t buy you much.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:36:00 +0000

Well, I did, but I assumed that came under military expenditure on that chart. Doesn't it?

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:17:00 +0000

Well I thought you just meant in terms of manpower, tanks, planes, etc.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:15:00 +0000

OK, now I'm confused. Those figures weren't anything like what I vaguely remembered, but I bowed to their authority. Matthew, how much other expenditure is there?

(I've got a lot of other distracting and important crap on my mind just now, so expect numerous mistakes from me for a while. Sorry.)

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:05:00 +0000

Oh. I apologise. S2 did mean the organisation’s funding cost. Oh, well yes that is nonsense.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:03:00 +0000

Don’t be a twat. S2’s argument is presumably based on their contribution over and above simple funding of the organisation.

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 06:00:00 +0000

Doh. I think I may have got confused with the UN there, or maybe I just dreamt it. My apologies.

The contributions are still way out of whack, but not to the extent I said. I stick by my if-I-were-President policy, except that I'd only give them three years, since there's so much less of a shortfall to make up than I thought.

Matthew,

I was talking about the European attitude to Article V, which was signed post-9/11, hence not during the Cold War.

By: Confused

Confused — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 05:34:00 +0000

"As I understand it, the US’s contributions to NATO outweigh every other member’s put together."

As I understand it, from having spent 30 seconds on Google, this is completely untrue.

http://www.basicint.org/europe/NATO/member_contrib.htm

Country/ Civil Budget/ Military Budget/ Security & Investment Programme
United States/ 36 523 000 (23.3%)/ 284 500 000 (28.0%)/ 132 000 000 (28.3%)

"Incidentally the US’s contribution to every defence pact it is signatory to outweigh every other member’s put together. But I don’t really believe you would like it to be different."

Check some basic facts before making an ass of yourself, Matthew.