Do you think that the USA spends too much money on its military?

According to Mikhail Gorbachev in an editorial in the International Herald Tribune "Questions for the candidates", the USA produces about half the world's military hardware. He pointed out that the Soviet Union's own conventional forces strength in the 1980s was an obstacle to mutual nuclear reductions in the world. In Foreign Affairs in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue, in an article called "A Disciplined Defense", the author said that if Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in the Pentagon's budgeting office 20 years ago and awoke today, his first reaction would be that nothing had changed, as the USA now spends almost exactly the amount, in real dollars, that President Ronald Reagan had sought in 1988. That does NOT include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With their supplemental budgets requests included, the 2008 US budget request is 647 billion dollars---25% higher, in real terms, than in 1968!