Editor, Gazette-Journal:

We constantly hear our elected officials, media outlets and talk show pundits telling us that our country needs to start making some "hard choices" regarding our expenditures. I would like to ask you to remind your elected officials and your favorite pundit—Republican, Democrat, Tea Party, Libertarian or Independent—about cutting defense spending.

Have you noticed how the media, the candidates, the people in office all talk about "entitlements?" It’s time we start thinking about the real meat of where our taxes go.

Total defense spending—between 2001 and 2011, the United States spent $7.2 trillion dollars (in constant FY2012 dollars) on defense, including the Pentagon’s annual base budget, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and nuclear weapons-related activities of the Department of Energy.

The Pentagon’s annual budget—not including war costs or DoE’S nuclear weapons activities—g...