About how much money did the United States spend on national defense during the years 2002 to 2006?

Answer 1

From:
http://home.att.net/~mwhodges/defense.htm

We are told "In 2001 (Bush administration) the slide in the defense spending ratio halted at 3.7% of national income by end of fiscal year 2001, at about the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack on New York and Washington. In 2002 defense spending increased to 4.1% per this chart, to 4.6% in 2003 and to 5% in 2004."

We are told "Bush's Office of Management and Budget projects the government will spend more on national defense this year and next than it did, in constant dollars, at the height of the Vietnam War. The White House puts national defense spending at $535.9 billion for fiscal 2006 and $527.4 billion for fiscal 2007. "
From:
www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33465&printerfriendlyVers=1

In 2002, we find "One side of the pullout lists U.S. defense spending at $343 billion" .
From:
http://badgerherald.com/news/2002/10/03/national_pigmobile_.php

We read "President George W. Bush last week signed a $355 billion Pentagon spending bill for 2003, increasing defense spending by more than $37 billion over 2002."
From:
http://goliath.ecnext.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2750&item_id=0199-2221352

Estimated Defense spending for 2004 is $375.3 billion
From:
mediamatters.org/items/200407020002

I found: 2004 President Bush signed a nearly $417 billion defense spending bill
From:
www.pbs.org/now/politics/defensedollars04.html

I found 2005 budget information: Congress and the White House give $420 billion a year (not including war costs) to
the Defense Department.
From:
http://borgenproject.org/Defense_Spending.html

For 2006: On Dec. 21, 2005, Congress passed a defense appropriations bill, which according to the press releases of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and many news articles subsequently written, funded "defense spending" for the United States for the current fiscal year, 2006. The impression made by the press releases and the news articles was that the $453 billion advertised in the bill, H.R. 2863, constitutes America's defense budget for 2006.[1] That would be quite incorrect. In fact, the total amount to be spent for the Department of Defense in 2006 is $13 billion to $63 billion more, the latter figure assuming full funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you also count, non-DOD "national defense" costs, add another $21 billion, and, if you count defense related security costs, such as homeland security, the congressional press release numbers are more than $200 billion wrong.
From:
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,86831,00.html

I copied and pasted the best articles that I could locate on each search that I did. It is difficult to imagine being able to spend whatever you want to without worrying about whether the money is actually within your budget, isn't it??
Eds