Eisenhower's Nightmare Arrives

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.counterpunch.org/spinney03032010.html

The MICC Moves to Hose the Taxpayer One More Time

As I indicated in CounterPunch on 3 February 2010, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) just released by the Obama Pentagon is a bad joke. That bad joke is about to be given the good housekeeping seal of approval by a special panel appointed jointly by the Secretary of Defense and the defense barons of the Armed Services committees in Congress. When this happens, rest assured, any desire to get control of the out-of-control defense budget will plunge far below its already low level. Chalk up another victory in the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex’s (MICC’s) war on the Constitution, the American taxpayer, and programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are hallmarks of civilized society.

To understand why this QDR review panel is gearing up to paint lipstick on the QDR pig, it is first necessary to describe what the QDR did not do.

Today, the Pentagon is now spending more in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time since the end of WWII to support a military force structure that is much smaller and older than at any time since the end of World War II. But the QDR did not even acknowledge the three mutually reinforcing problems that are now combining to produce a catastrophic meltdown of the Pentagon’s budget plans, let alone the cynical modes of conduct that virtually guarantee even more force structure reductions, even if defense budgets will continue to increase:

First, with a few exceptions, the Obama QDR approved a defense budget and a long range program plan that will not buy enough new weapons to replace the weapons in the inventories of the military forces in a timely manner. Consequently, the average age of these weapons, already at a post WWII high, will continue to get older at an accelerating rate. Given this situation, the only way to reduce the growth in average age will be to retire the oldest weapons without replacement, thereby shrinking the size of the forces yet again, in effect continuing a devolution that began as early as 1957 (see Defense Death Spiral, especially pps. 21-25).

More at the link above --

[Autumn]

1. Just posted and already

un reced . K/R

[Echo In Light]

2. k/r

[ShortnFiery]

3. It's been ramping up for a long time but the Bush Administration opened the flood-gates

of $ Goodies for those corporations comprising the Military Industrial Complex.

Welcome to American Crusade 2001+ ... a right wing duopoly under new management.

[jody]

4. QDR & DOD aren't the problem. It's presidents with foreign policies to meddle in other nation's

affairs and congress who fund those policies who bear 100% of the blame.