That graph was EXACTLY what I thought it was.
You really have to quit quoting these out of date, misleading websites. If you follow the REFERENCES section from the first website you posted, you will see that everything they quote is from the BUDGET, not from any war supplimentals. (that's the part at the bottom of the page that points to the "Budget of the United States of America". It does list items outside of the DOD, but there are always defense related expenses outside of the DOD in every budget. That isn't the same as budget supplimentals that are, by definition, outside of the budget.
All of your web sites quote the Budget over and over. You can't quote budget numbers when it comes to the war.
The wars has been funded by supplimentals, not the budget. The wars do not appear on either of the two BUDGET links from your first web site because you have to go to the supplimentals to find the war spending. That is still true in this year's spending.
If you go to the current budget, and look at the
Table 3.1
—OUTLAYS BY SUPERFUNCTION AND FUNCTION: 1940–2012
on page 54 you will see that the budget for defense for 2007 is 572 billion dollars (listed as
571,869 in millions of dollars)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...8/pdf/hist.pdf
But that's just the budget for defense spending, not the supplimental to fund the war.
Now here is the supplimental that actually funds the "Global War on Terror (GWOT)". This is ON TOP of the already growing Defense spending that appears in the budget I posted above. Page 3 gives the total amount of nearly 200 billion dollars in total. This is on top of the budget.
"These revisions total $45.9 billion, and are in addition to the $150.5 billion you already
requested." (45.9 billion + 150.5 billion =~200 billion in round numbers)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...t_10_22_07.pdf
So the graphs and statistics that your are quoting are way off. They are off by 200 billion dollars, or about 35%.
Where does this extra money come from? We borrow it. All of this 200 billion budget supplimental is borrowed. This is on top of our already huge budget deficit spending which is also borrowed. The more we borrow, the lower the dollar sinks. That's a rule of economics that we haven't been able to avoid in the US.
We went from a budget surplus in 2000 of
86 billion to a buget deficit of 427 billion dollars for 2007.
The supplimentals come in on TOP of that budget deficit. The war is a 50% increase over our budget deficit. We have to borrow 627 billion dollars for 2007 alone. I don't care if you express that as a percent of GDP or as how many Wendy's burgers it would buy. The net effect is the tanking of the value of the dollar, which is in a large part because of the war.
And yes, electing somebody who will stop the war in Iraq will have a significant effect on that 50% increase over our total deficit that comes from the war supplimental. This will in turn help raise the dollar.
Right now there is not a single Republican who will do this, so yes, voting Democrat is the only answer. If there were a Republican who I thought would stop the war, I would consider him too.
And no, the value of the dollar isn't the only consideration for stopping the war. But I think we should agree not to go further into those issues.
I have more to add regarding the rest of your post, but it's bed time.