What Did the Pentagon Do With That Extra Trillion Dollars?

[ensho]

http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler09032010.html


The Surge in Defense Spending


In 1998, the Pentagon budget was at a twenty three year low at $361 billion (in constant 2010 dollars). For 2010, the DOD budget was $697 billion (also 2010 dollars, as are all the rest that follow).

According to the analysis of the Project on Defense Alternatives, between 1998 and 2010 Congress appropriated to the Pentagon $2.144 Trillion (with a "T") more than was anticipated by the 1999 "baseline." Of that amount, $1.113 Trillion was spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and $1.031 Trillion was added to "base" (non-war) Pentagon spending. (See p. 3 of PDA's study, "An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending". I basically concur with PDA's numbers, which are from DOD and OMB budget data as described on p. 61.)

What did you get for that extra $1 Trillion? Basically, you got a smaller Navy and Air Force and a tiny increase in the size of the Army. As an extra bonus, the hardware those forces use are now older than they were in the Clinton administration in 1998.

How can that be?

-snip tells 'how'-

If the soft spoken Secretary Gates is to avoid the derision generally slung at the blustering Secretary Rumsfeld, the former will need to do more - a lot more - to evade a legacy of failure. Gates highly effective soft spoken technique of overpowering Congress when he wants to and his mutually reinforcing relationship with President Obama will be seen by history as wasted assets if the secretary does mobilize them for a far more pervasive program of real reform to help the Pentagon survive, even prosper, in the coming age of scarce money.
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the pentagon has 'prospered' enough in my opinion.

and they have lied with arrogance.

[BeFree]

1. Don't you feel safer?

Clinton cut the defense budget along with the budget deficits.

Now we have increased defense budgets and increased deficits.

Why did I feel safer during Clinton's term?

[chill_wind]

2. K & R.

[Octafish]

3. Halliburton, KBR, Carlyle Group, Trireme Partnerships, Xe-Blackwater, etc. etc. etc.

War is Big Business. And that means Big Contracts from the Pentagon's Trillion Dollar Teat.

Once upon a time I thought Congress would investigate such corruption.