"President Bush will ask Congress to approve a plan to increase U.S. military spending to $379 billion next year -- a boost of $48 billion. It would represent the biggest one-year rise since the Reagan buildup two decades ago and a suspension of 'the peace dividend.'

Just how much money is $379 billion?

- It is the size of the entire economy of Australia or the Netherlands, and bigger than the Russian economy.

- It matches the combined military spending of the 15 countries with the next biggest defense budgets. (The proposed increase alone is about the same as the entire defense budget of the next biggest spender -- Japan.)

- Bush's total request would equal the market capitalization of General Electric Corp., which has the biggest market capitalization of any American corporation.

- It would roughly match, in inflation adjusted terms, the U.S. defense budget in 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War. But the administration says it is $70 billion less than the inflation-adjusted figure for defense spending in 1985, a period of peace before the Cold War ended.

- The request would come to only 3.5 percent of expected U.S. gross domestic product. While that would be at the highest level since 1996, it would still be smaller than the share of economic output the United States devoted to defense in any year from 1941 (before Pearl Harbor was attacked) through the end of Bill Clinton's first administration." (Outlook, The Washington Post, January 27, 2002)