700+ bases in 130 countries/6000+ bases in US & it's territories

[donsu]

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17563

America's Empire of Bases

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize – or do not want to recognize – that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire – an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.

-snip-

It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and has another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases – surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries – and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo – even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

-snip-

The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather than the big population centers of the United States. For example, even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas bases – including women in the services, spouses, and relatives of military personnel – obtaining an abortion at a local military hospital is prohibited. Since there are some 14,000 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults each year in the military, women who become pregnant overseas and want an abortion have no choice but to try the local economy, which cannot be either easy or pleasant in Baghdad or other parts of our empire these days.
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how awful for humanity - a fundamentalist military in charge of the biggest guns.

if the bushgang doesn't manage to kill or maim us all the Peak Oil crash will give it a try. the blue planet will be left in tatters.

[cthrumatrix]

1. and Cheney says we "need more"...while the US goes into bankruptcy

[madrchsod]

2. we are are on the downside

of the empire. we are over extended and running out of money to support the empire. china -south america and europe-russia will challenge the american empire in this century...as the rest of the world faces the future the empire will be frozen to the past.the united states will or is the next argentina but on a much larger scale. it`s a bright future for our children

[HereSince1628]

3. The 6000 bases in the US and its territories surprised me.

That number leads to something like 100 _bases_ per state/territory.
That number of _bases_ would certainly stand out.

I am guessing that it includes a lot of "facilities" that aren't really what most people would call bases. Things like national guard armories, which are often little more than gymnasia with parking lots, as well as single hangers at regional airports housing one or two air guard helicopters.