THE US ARMY IS BROKE- OUT OF MONEY

[Jcrowley]

Whether you are among the growing majority of Americans that think Bush is doing an awful job, or a member of the shrinking minority of those that believe he's doing a the right thing, you have to be bowled by this story. Just when I think I can close the book on the breathtaking incompetence of this administration, hard facts like this cross my bow and I have to reconsider.

<snip>

This budget crunch comes at a time when running the US Army never cost more, Jaffe reported.
• To stem the flow of soldiers leaving the Army because of repeated deployments to Iraq the Army was forced to spend $773 million on “retention bonus' this year compared with just $85 million three years ago.
• The Army had to spend an additional $300 million on recruiting this year than in 2003.

How much of the Army's budget problems are due to poor budgeting and how much from private sector gouging? You decide.

Here are few more facts from Jaffe's report:
• The cost of equipping an infantry soldier tripled, from $7000 in 1999 to $24,000 today.
• The cost of Humvee's went from $32,000 in 2001 to a breathtaking $225,000 each today.
• The cost of training, feeding and housing Army recruits went from $75,000 per soldier in 2001 to $120,000 today.  (The Army uses private contractors, largely Halliburton's Kellogg, Root & Brown, to provide most non-training services, such as food service and base maintenance. ) 

http://www.newsforreal.com/

Behind the Army's Cash Crunch

Our Army gets $168 billion a year to train and fight. So why do its chiefs keep complaining about a cash crunch? The Wall Street Journal's Greg Jaffe explains, in maybe the best article on the subject to date. From 1990 to 2005, the military lavished money on billion-dollar destroyers, fighter jets and missile-defense systems. Defenders of such programs say the U.S. faces a broad array of threats and must be prepared for all of them. High-tech weaponry contributed to the swift toppling of the regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has been of little help in the more difficult task of stabilizing the two countries.

<snip>

It may seem hard to believe that a country which allocated $168 billion to the Army this year -- more than twice the 2000 budget -- can't cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the two pillars of the Army, personnel and equipment -- both built to wage high-tech, firepower-intensive wars -- are under enormous stress:

The cost of basic equipment that soldiers carry into battle -- helmets, rifles, body armor -- has more than tripled to $25,000 from $7,000 in 1999. The cost of a Humvee, with all the added armor, guns, electronic jammers and satellite-navigational systems, has grown seven-fold to about $225,000 a vehicle from $32,000 in 2001.

The cost of paying and training troops has grown 60% to about $120,000 per soldier, up from $75,000 in 2001. On the reserve side, such costs have doubled since 2001, to about $34,000 per soldier. At Fort Knox, Ky., the cash crunch got so bad this summer that the Army ran out of money to pay janitors who clean the classrooms where captains are taught to be commanders. So the officers, who will soon be leading 100-soldier units, clean the office toilets themselves.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003058.html

Full Story Here:
http://users2.wsj.com/lmda/do/checkLogin?mg=wsj-users2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB116580493391846169.html%3Fmod%3Dhpp_us_pageone

[Kagemusha]

1. I take it the $32,000 Humvee is armored like toilet paper?

The Pentagon did bitch and whine extensively about the up-armoring program from the very beginning...

[Mabus]

4. Extra amour means more weight

This means the vehicles wear out quicker. Once they get worn out they have to buy new ones and add extra armour to them. It's a vicious circle and our troops are paying for it with their lives and limbs.

[GreenZoneLT]

14. The Humvee is a jeep, not an armored car

The Humvee was never designed to operate in the environment it's in. The fully-armored ones (which was a design expedient that wears them out and makes them prone to rollovers) weigh double the original design. Most of the expense is in the various bits of new electronic equipment, though.

[aquart]

2. And Bush wants to send in 20,000 more soldiers.

Does he think this is a video game?

[madokie]

3. he treats it as one

[Gwerlain]

19. ...with monopoly money.

MY monopoly money.

[Ilsa]

5. Not just the army, but the US govt and quite a few people who had jobs that

got outsourced, and people who used to have medical insurance, and twenty-somethings with student loans and no good jobs, etc...

[MADem]

6. Personnel costs, even in peacetime, represent the largest chunk of the budget

These costs balloon in wartime.

And if you look at those shitty, bullshit, added-on-to Hummers--and think of that "Pentagon Wars" film (a must-see if you haven't already--not totally accurate, but the 'sense' of it is fabulous) you have to think, gee, some asshole could probably turn out a purpose built vehicle that could do a better job than this add-on shit, for WAY less money...and maybe, just maybe, they could have kept a few auto workers on the job, too, while they're at it. But no--instead, they first, delay, and do nothing....then, they have to overthink it, go through an asinine procurement process, not think about say, LICENSING permission from one of the ones they think they might like to manufacture a few hundred over in the US, today, instead of eons from now....what putzes:

What the Army says it really needs is an all-new vehicle, designed to better withstand roadside bombs that have become part of life in Iraq. But such a vehicle likely won't be ready until 2010 or 2012, Army officials say. In the interim, the Army wants to buy something on the commercial market -- South Africa, Turkey and Australia all make alternatives. Yet it's not clear whether the Army, which is struggling to equip the current force, has the money.

[annabanana]

7. War profiteers are robbing us blind. . . n/t

[Selatius]

8. All the money we've been spending has been borrowed money...from China and Japan and others.

As long as they bought US government bonds under the belief that the US is guaranteed to pay them back, things were fine, but confidence is shaky now. The result is the value of the dollar has been dropping relative to other currencies. You just don't add trillions to the national debt and expect that there won't be negative consequences to gluttonous borrowing. You think the US Dollar lost a third of its value for nothing?

[tbyg52]

20. Teenagers running up Daddy's credit card

And *we* get to pay it off (if we can).

[ms liberty]

9. K&R n/t

[AwakeAtLast]

10. Can't kick this enough

This is the most ludicrous thing I have read in a long time. How the hell do we get out of this? Hmmmm...just one more thing this new Dem Congress is going to have to clean up! :grr: :nuke: :grr:

[OneBlueSky]

11. the Army is broke in more ways than one . . . it's not just fiscal . . . n/t

.

[leftofthedial]

12. outsourcing strikes again

corporations can't do a frigging thing right

PLUS, they charge ten times what everything is worth.

[FedUpWithIt All]

13. Little reminder about where the money is REALLY going.

Old article from FOX news of all places.

Audit Shows $8.8B Missing in Iraq


One of the main benefactors of the Iraq funds was Texas-based firm Halliburton, which was paid more than $1 billion of that money to bring in fuel for Iraqi civilians. The monitoring board said it had not been given access to U.S. audits of contracts held by Halliburton (search).

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129489,00.html


Finally agreeing to pay SOME of it back. I have my doubts, but i digress...

A Halliburton subsidiary agreed to pay the government $8 million to resolve accusations of overbilling related to the firm's work for the Army in the Balkans, the Justice Department said yesterday.

The allegations against KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root, stemmed from orders placed with 10 foreign subcontractors that were working for KBR on military logistics support in 1999 and 2000. The accusations, made under the federal False Claims Act, included double-billing, inflating prices and providing products that didn't fit the Army's needs during the construction of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/29/halliburton-unit-forced-t_n_35219.html

[symbolman]

15. I was a Purchasing Agent in the US Air Force in the early 70's

and I can tell you from my Contract Maintenance experience that the money being outsourced to corps like Halliburton is OBSCENE.

Though we might have been buying $800 toilet seats, at least the troops got what THEY NEEDED to fight, at least TRY and stay alive. This 'tooth to tail' scam needs to be exposed. And I want all that money BACK from Halliburton, with the company DISSOLVED by the Federal Govt for War Profiteering.

Can Someone tell me that the War Profiteering LAWS are no longer on the books?

If they can pull law from the 1800's out of their asses to PROTECT their asses, then the PEOPLE should be able to UTILIZE the War Profiterring Laws, the same ones that SHUT DOWN PRESCOTT BUSH for trading with the Nazis.

Paging Henry Waxman!

[Nikki Stone1]

16. It's the looters in the White House; Privatization = transfer of tax $$ to private corporations

Remember Grover Nordquist wanting to drown the government like a baby in a bathtub full of water? That's what is happening here. The fact that it's the Army makes no difference. I wish the real Republicans could see that the neocons are actually destroying our national defense to enrich themselves and their buddies.

[MindPilot]

17. I'm sorry, but the vision of an officer cleaning a toilet

just brings a smile to this old sailor's face. :D

But it is the perfect metaphor for exactly how FUBAR this administration has become. Double plus FUBAR, I say!!

[Nordmadr]

22. As a former enlisted sailor myself, I'd be mighty surprised if those

officers are cleaning those toilets themselves. Hell, you can't tell me they don't have any enlisted folks at those training facilities; you can bet your ass they're the ones cleaning the toilets. They don't even have to tidy up their own staterooms underway. On my ship the lowest ranking Ensigns bunked with only 3 other roomates. Enlisted quarters, 50 +.

Olafr
USN 91-95
Plankowner, USS Lake Erie (CG-70)
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

[ThsMchneKilsFascists]

18. Dwight Eisenhower tried to warn us all BEWARE THE MF'ing MILITARISTS

exerpt
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address

[Toots]

21. Republicans think it is okay because it is mostly Republican "kick back" money

Why would hum vees go from $32,000 to $225,000 in three years? What possible justification could there be? Republican "kick back" money. The rape and plunder of America goes on unabated.

[Ian_rd]

23. Defense Contractors on the other hand ...

Well, you know.

That's what Republicans do when they stand on the floor and demand Congress approve more money for "our troops" in Iraq. They're actually talking about massive contracts for defense corporations.

[Hubert Flottz]

24. Ask Bush...

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