Although the U.S. is not in imminent danger of attack from any country, President Obama’s first budget further expands the Pentagon’s already dominant global operations.

Not even the prospect of a $3.1 trillion combined budget deficit for this year and next deters him. Let them chop the budget for black colleges and police officer death benefits, the Pentagon and its contractors continue to feast at the champagne-and-caviar table.

It’s not as though for eight years the Bush Pentagon hadn’t nearly outspent the rest of the world combined on designing deadlier weapons and employing them in illegal wars.

Obama’s new $664 billion Pentagon budget is $21 billion higher (four percent) than the final Bush budget. It includes $65 billion for Afghanistan and $61 billion for Iraq. Why?

Well, here’s what Defense Secy. Robert Gates told the Naval War College April 17th: “The U.S. must not take its current dominance for granted…its battle fleet, by one estimate, is still larger than the next 13 navies combined---and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners.”

(Get that? “Larger than the next 13 navies combined.” What’s more, nearly every world power is our buddy. So where’s the urgent need to spend billions on expansion? And notice his use of the word “dominance.”)

Gates went on to boast, “In terms of capabilities, the over-match is even greater. No country in the rest of the world has anything close to the reach and firepower to match a carrier strike group. And the U.S. has and will maintain 11 at least until 2040.”

Gates seeks an incredible 2,400 new Joint Strike Fighter planes when the U.S. already is undisputed master of the skies. Think of that: 2,400 warplanes in the absence of an enemy!

At 100 million bucks a pop, that air armada will cost taxpayers over $240 billion.

As Sheldon Filger wrote in the May 16 Huffington Post of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2009 outlay: “This stratospheric expendure is equivalent to the combined totals for the next 25 largest military budgets on the planet.”

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