Eye opening factoid of the day

From Foreign Affairs:

"Many people both inside and outside the military have begun to wonder why the U.S. government continues to burden the armed forces with nondefense responsibilities and ask, "Where are the civilians?" The answer is: they do not exist.

The number of lawyers at the Defense Department is larger than the entire U.S. diplomatic corps, there are more musicians in the military bands than there are U.S. diplomats, and the Defense Department's 2008 budget was over 24 times as large as the combined budgets of the State Department and USAID ($750 billion compared with $31 billion). A mere $7.5 billion went to the State Department's diplomatic and consular programs, including its large operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the 265 other diplomatic posts around the world. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on health care for military personnel than the U.S. government allocates to diplomacy and foreign assistance." (emphasis added)

{hat tip to Diplopundit.}