George W. Bush's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2008 is a disgrace. It allocates 51% of the discretionary budget (exclusive of the cash-in/cash-out system of the entitlement programs) to the Pentagon. Bush asks for an 11% increase in the military budget exclusive of the horrendous costs of our crazy occupation of Iraq. If you wanted to see what chastening effect the 2006 elections would have on the psychology of an infantile man with a narcissistic personality disorder, there's your answer. Bush's response to his massive defeat at the polls, to his subterranean approval ratings, to his diminution in the American mind to the status of an imbecile, is to say go to Hell. In your face. Up yours.
Bush is determined to use his remaining tenure in office to enrich certain sectors of the American business community. There's really nothing else for him to do. He was never interested in governing the country as part of a disciplined effort to improve the lives of the American people as a whole. His dumb war bogged down and became an embarrassment, but also a self-renewing feeding trough for the fattest pigs in the American plutocracy. Bush's natural constituency. Bush loves doing favors for the fat cats, and it was a pretty nifty plan, he thinks, to use the American military to execute the business plan of corporate America. How many countries can do that? Probably only a country that spends more on "defense" (from...?) than the next 14 countries combined, and over half of all money spent on defense...on...the...planet Earth.
I think we can say two things for sure. Defense spending in the United States is unrelated to the "existential" threats that America faces. While we have, through the stupidity of abrogating the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, rekindled a nuclear arms race with Russia, it is also true that the Iraq War has demonstrated that a huge military apparatus, with all the latest electronic doodads, doesn't work very well against the episodic and ad hoc character of "terrorist" threats. Would anything this 11% increase will buy have stopped 9/11? No, that simply required smart people doing their jobs, and on that score, this Administration is bankrupt.
Dwight Eisenhower warned us a long time ago this would happen. He was right. Bush and his (still) compliant Congress are utterly shameless about funneling American taxpayer bucks to their friends, the merchants of death. Maybe Congress will strike back and cut the Pentagon budget in half! Maybe they'll conclude spending only 25 cents of every dollar spent on the world's militaries is enough to defend one country. Maybe Ben&Jerry's ice cream will be dispensed from the assholes of all those corporate pigs!
The video embedded below, along with the draft script and supporting links,
can be freely viewed on the Nature Bats Last Substack account. Comments are
ena...
11 hours ago
post has some excellent points. Here's some additional data:
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. Department of Defense, headquartered in the Pentagon, is one of the most massive organizations on the planet, with net annual operating costs of $635 billion, assets worth $1.3 trillion, liabilities of $1.9 trillion and more that 2.9 million military and civilian personnel as of fiscal year 2005.
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak.
It is difficult to convey the complexity of the way DOD works to someone who has not experienced it. This is a massive machine with so many departments and so much beaurocracy that no president, including Bush totally understands it.
Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and "Rice Bowls" which are never mixed.
Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exhorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon's many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 10 years.
What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing.
Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues - with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.
Please examine the following link to testimony given by Franklin C. Spinney before Congress in 2002. It provides very specific information from a whistle blower who is still blowing his whistle (Look him up in your browser and you get lots of feedback) Frank spent the same amount of time as I did in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) but in government quarters. His job in government was a similar role to mine in defense companies. Frank's emphasis in this testimony is on the money the machine costs us. It is compelling and it is noteworthy that he was still a staff analyst at the Pentagon when he gave this speech. I still can't figure out how he got his superior's permission to say such blunt things. He was extremely highly respected and is now retired.
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm
The brick wall I often refer to is the Pentagon's own arrogance. It will implode by it's own volition, go broke, or so drastically let down the American people that it will fall in shambles. Rest assured the day of the implosion is coming. The machine is out of control.
If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting on this blog entitled, "Odyssey of Armaments"
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html
On the same subject, you may also be interested in the following sites from the "Project On Government Oversight", observing it's 25th Anniversary and from "Defense In the National Interest", inspired by Franklin Spinney and contributed to by active/reserve, former, or retired military personnel. More facts on the Military Industrial Complex can be gleaned from "The Dissident" link, also posted below:
http://pogo.org/
http://www.d-n-i.net/top_level/about_us.htm
http://dissidentnews.wordpress.com/2007/01/30/the-military-industrial-complex-and-the-business-of-war/