But every move to cut military fat is fiercely opposed by a powerful pack of C.R.E.E.P.S.

These Cowardly, Right-wing, Elitist, Embezzling Parasites scream in protest whenever someone proposes a reduction in arms and armies

The CREEPS in D.C. claim that any tiny cut creates a gaping security risk.

The CREEPS on network news and talk radio assassinate the character of anyone who proposes the responsible management of military spending.

Everyone who wants to make America strong, again, must arm themselves with information — and understand the difference between spending for defense and paying for war and pork.

The US government pays for arms and armies for three basic reasons:

Defense: maintaining sufficient armed forces to secure our borders.

War: invading a nation that does not pose a real security risk (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq)

Pork: creating fabulous wealth for the owners of companies like Halliburton and blue collar jobs for the people who work for them.

The vast majority of Americans are peace-minded people who are willing to pay for legitimate national defense.

Nearly none of us support aggressive wars or pork-barrel spending.

But our budgetary scales are tipping way over towards war and pork – with funding for arms and armies exceeding all rational purposes.

The CREEPs on network news pound their drums and stir up hysteria over Iran and North Korea. They drown out the facts:

The US outguns Iran 99 to 1 ($711 billion vs. $7.2 billion)

The US outguns North Korea 129 to 1 ($711 billion vs. $5.5 billion)[iii]

Few Americans are fully aware of the staggering size of our military budget.

Network news focuses on the cost of Healthcare reform – constantly covering a handful of CREEPs who claim that a public health insurance option will bankrupt the nation.

Mainstream media rarely makes mention of military spending; when they do, they report that the Defense Budget for 2009 is a $513 billion.[iv]

Naturally, we assume that these enormous amounts cover the entire cost of the military.

But the Government budget process spreads military money to multiple departments – a maneuver which obscures half of the true, total cost.

No Government agency compiles those piles of money into one published report. With no good accounting, there is nearly no accountability.

To find all one trillion, one hundred seventy five billion, two hundred million dollars ($1,175,200,000,000) of your tax money–and see where it all goes–private citizens like you and me have to gather information from a wide range of sources: 

Principle Data Sources:

2008 – Chalmers Johnson “Going Bankrupt”

2009  – Travis Sharp “Recap of the FY 2009 Defense Budget”

2010 – Winslow T. Wheeler “Of Pork and Baloney”

War Costs – Stiglitz and Blimes “$3 trillion may be too low”

Now, here’s something shocking that you may never see on Network TV:

$405 billion of this year’s tax money goes to paying the vast moneys owed due to past wars and the bloated budgets of prior years.[v]

This includes interest payments, Veterans Affairs and military retirement.

You won’t see these costs in the official “Defense Budget.”

But you will pay for them with your taxes dollars.

For year after year, unfettered military spending has been burying us in debt.

But now America has a President and Secretary of Defense who are willing to apply scrutiny and scruples to the military budget. For all of us who want to rebuild our nation, now is the time to show our support.

There was Rush [Limbaugh], who lied publicly about why he didn’t go. There was Phil Gramm – student and teaching deferments.  George Will – student deferment. Clarence Thomas was 4-F.  So was Pat Buchanan, who had a “bad knee.”  Though today he’s an avid jogger.

Dan Quayle’s father got him into the Indiana National Guard.  Maybe that’s why George Sr. picked Quayle in ’88 – reminded him of his boy.

Then there’s Newt – grad school . Saxby Chambliss, who defeated Max Cleland for the Senate in Georgia.  Cleland lost three limbs in Vietnam, but Chambliss ran ads with Cleland’s face next to Saddam Hussein’s.  Chambliss, it seems had Buchanan’s knee problem – t he kind that gets better after you’ve gotten your 4-F.

There’s Bill Bennett, who a few years ago said he has two regrets in his life, not meeting his wife earlier, and not going to Vietnam.  I have the exact same regrets – I, too wish Bennett had met his wife earlier and gone to Vietnam .

There’s a ton of these guys, Ken Starr got out for psoriasis.  New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg got out for acne.  Acne!  Ashcroft was teaching.  Tom DeLay once explained that there was literally no room in the military for him because so many minority youths had volunteered for the military to escape the ghetto.  .

Vice President Cheney has said that he didn’t fight in Vietnam because at the time he “had other priorities.”  Coincidentally, that’s exactly why I didn’t go.

Source: http://www.propublica.org/feature/leadership-pacs-let-the-good-times-roll-925

The private company’s name was Halliburton.

In 1992, Cheney left public office and with no previous business experience at all, became the CEO of a major private company.

The private company’s name was Halliburton.

For the next eight years, thousands of military logistics contracts were outsourced. One thousand of these contracts went to one private company.

The private company’s name was Halliburton.

In 2000, Dick Cheney became the Vice President of the United States. A little over a year later, the United States went to war against Afghanistan. Halliburton’s profits jumped.

About two years after that, the United States went to war against Iraq. Halliburton, whose former CEO was now Vice-President of the United States, got hundreds of ‘no-bid’ contracts. That is, contracts for Iraq were simply given to Halliburton, with no competitive bidding at all. Half a billion dollars worth in 2003, three billion Dollars in 2004, eight billion dollars in 2005.

Halliburton’s profits spiked again. And so did the value of Dick Cheney’s 433,000 “deferred stock options” in Halliburton.

*  *  *

The “Stop the Merchants of Death” campaign is asking people to pledge not to work for Halliburton or Kellogg Brown & Root until they stop making profit from making war.

Source: http://www.warresisters.org/smod/halliburton.shtml

But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the American military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4 billion for the Department of Energy goes toward developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3 billion in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt, and Pakistan). Another $1.03 billion outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and reenlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military itself, up from a mere $174 million in 2003, the year the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7 billion, 50% of which goes for the long-term care of the grievously injured among the at least 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and another 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4 billion goes to the Department of Homeland Security.

Missing as well from this compilation is $1.9 billion to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5 billion to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6 billion for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200 billion in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year (2008), conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.” (Chalmers Johnson)

Source: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174884

For decades, the media have taken their descriptions of the size of the defense budget straight from the Pentagon’s annual press release – without even rudimentary double-checking. This year, they will cite the top-line dollar amount at $534 billion – the amount they reported on Feb. 26.

Wrong. That number ignores an additional $6 billion the Pentagon will get in “mandatory” appropriations, mostly for personnel-related expenses. The data are available from the Office of Management and Budget, but its press releases are more complicated.

Some, but not all, of the news articles will also ignore the additional $130 billion sought to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

*  *  *

The articles will also leave out the money being sought by the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons and other appropriations, such as for the Selective Service and the National Defense Stockpile. Again, not in the DOD press release. Add another $22 billion.

Consider the human costs of current and previous wars in the Department of Veterans Affairs – surely, a legitimate defense cost. Add $106 billion.

Also consider the Department of Homeland Security: Add $43 billion.

What about the military and economic aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, gifts and loans to Israel and others, U.N. peacekeeping costs, and all the rest from the State Department? Add $49 billion.

Also, there is an account buried in the Department of the Treasury to help pay for military retirement. Add about $28 billion.

Each year, we pay interest on the national debt. People disagree, sometimes strenuously, on how much is DOD’s share. About 20 percent of federal spending goes to the Pentagon: That’s another $57 billion.

Add it all together, and you get $974 billion – almost $1 trillion.

*  *  *

When you read the news articles later this week on the defense budget, consider it all an opportunity to assess the competence of journalism in the U.S. these days. (By Winslow T. Wheeler)

We believe that it is, in fact, conservative. Even the president would have to admit that the $50 to $60 billion estimate given by the administration before the war was wildly off the mark; there is little reason to have confidence in their arithmetic. They admit to a cost so far of $600 billion.

Our numbers differ from theirs for three reasons: first we assume that we are there, in diminished strength, only through to 2017. With operational spending going on at $12 billion a month, and with every year costing more than the last, it is easy to come to a total operational cost that is double the $600 billon already spent.  (Editor’s note, as of September 2009, total operational spending is $915 Billion, see, http://costofwar.com

Second, we include war expenditures hidden elsewhere in the budget, and budgetary expenditures that we would have to incur in the future even if we left tomorrow. Most important of these are future costs of caring for the 40% of returning veterans that are likely to suffer from disabilities (in excess of $600 billion; second world war veterans’ costs didn’t peak until 1993), and restoring the military to its prewar strength. If you include interest, and interest on the interest – with all of the war debt financed – the budgetary costs quickly mount.

Finally, our $3 trillion dollars estimate also includes costs to the economy that go beyond the budget, for instance the cost of caring for the huge number of returning disabled veterans that go beyond the costs borne by the federal government – in one out of five families with a serious disability, someone has to give up a job. The macro-economic costs are even larger. Almost every expert we have talked to agrees that the war has had something to do with the rise in the price of oil; it was not just an accident that oil prices began to soar at the same time as the war began.

*  *  *

[T]he huge deficits to finance the war will have their toll in the long run. Deficits matter in both the short run and the long. They help crowd out private investment that would have stimulated the economy far more than the war expenditures; and the reduced investments reduce long-run productivity. With 40% of the funds borrowed from abroad, Americans will be sending interest payments abroad – lowering living standards at home.

*  *  *

In adding up the quantifiable costs of the war, it is hard not to come up with a number in excess of $3 trillion. In putting a $3 trillion price tag on the war, we believe we have been excessively conservative – a $4 or $5 trillion tag would be more reasonable. And remember – this is just the cost for America. ( By Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes)

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/06/3trillionmaybetoolow

As all commanders-in-chief before him, President Obama paid tribute to generations of American war veterans.

“It’s not the powerful weapons that make our military the strongest in the world. It’s not the sophisticated systems that make us the most advanced. No, the true strength of our military lies in the spirit and skill of our men and women in uniform,” he said.

Mr. Obama said American servicemen and women have once again proven themselves in Iraq, where all U.S. forces are to be withdrawn by the end of 2011, and in Afghanistan, where the president said a sustained effort will be required to defeat an entrenched insurgency and eliminate safe havens for terrorists.

Mr. Obama noted that less than one percent of Americans are serving in uniform at a time when enormous demands have been placed on the armed forces.

“Perhaps never in American history have so few protected so many. The responsibility for our security must not be theirs alone. That is why I have made it a priority to enlist all elements of our national power in defense of our national security — our diplomacy and development, our economic might and our moral example,” he added.

In addition, the president said he is increasing the nation’s defense budget while reforming the way America spends its military dollars. Mr. Obama criticized projects and weaponry geared toward the now-defunct Cold War rather than battling today’s insurgents in rugged terrain. He pledged to veto any defense bill that promotes defense contractor and Pentagon special interests rather than the life and death needs of U.S. troops.

“This waste would be unacceptable at any time. But at a time when we’re fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, it is inexcusable. It is an affront to the American people and to our troops. And it is time for it to stop,” said the president.

As an example, Mr. Obama pointed to plans to build a new, multi-billion-dollar presidential helicopter. He said the proposed helicopter would come with a dazzling array of unnecessary capabilities, like food preparation during a nuclear attack.

“I will tell you something. If the United States of America is under nuclear attack, the last thing on my mind will be whipping up a snack,” he said.

The crowd of several thousand occasionally interrupted the president with polite applause.

The applause grew louder when Mr. Obama promised to do more to help military families and to address the needs of veterans in health care, housing and other matters.

The president’s focus on cutting wasteful military spending comes at a time of record U.S. budget deficits and the longest economic recession since World War II. Public opinion polls show that many Americans are greatly concerned about rising government spending at a time when tax receipts are falling dramatically.

The president spoke in Arizona, home state of his Republican opponent in last year’s election, Senator John McCain, a leading proponent of defense spending reform. (By Michael Bowman)

Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-17-voa52.cfm

(Boston Globe Editorial)

President Obama expressed fitting impatience with the irrationality of the weapons procurement system this week, when he told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention: “If a project doesn’t support our troops, if it does not make America safer, we will terminate it. And if Congress sends me a defense bill loaded with a bunch of pork, I will veto it.’’ This is the right attitude for a chief executive who wants to do something about a defense budget that has swelled beyond anything President Eisenhower might have imagined when he warned of the military-industrial complex.

It will take more than veto threats, however, to bring that leviathan under control. Political leaders, the military brass and defense contractors will have to accept a true revolution in military affairs – a different way of determining America’s defense needs. Members of Congress, including the New England delegation, will have to approach defense cuts with a new attitude. No one expects them to stop advocating for jobs in their districts, but their ultimate commitment – and votes – should be for a rational process that no longer approves projects the Defense Department neither wants nor needs.

Source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/08/22/how_to_tackle_defense_waste/

Gates was presenting what he called a “reform budget,” reflecting the lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, emphasizing the needs of today over the dubious musings of what might be needed 20 years from now, and recognizing that money is far from limitless.

The legislators, especially some Republicans (and Joe Lieberman), were wringing their hands as if Gates’ budget–more than a half-trillion dollars, not counting another $130 billion to sustain the two wars we’re fighting–amounted to a pittance and as if even slight cuts in marginal weapons systems would plunge America into serious danger.

Take the secretary’s exchange with Sen. Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama. Sessions was worked up over cuts in the missile defense program. Gates was cutting back the number of Alaska-based interceptors from 44 to 30; he was canceling the multiple-kill vehicle and the airborne laser. What, Sessions asked, is going on here? Gates replied that he’s supported missile defense ever since President Reagan started the program back in 1983 but that the Pentagon had to consider practicalities. The Alaska interceptors are good for one thing–shooting down missiles launched from North Korea–and 30 interceptors are more than enough to deal with that (still hypothetical) threat. The multiple-kill vehicle was designed during the Cold War to ward off a huge attack by the Soviet Union. The policy for the past eight years has been to counter small attacks by rogue nations or terrorists, so a weapon designed to shoot down lots of missiles at once isn’t needed, even if it were to work (which, though he didn’t say so, is extremely unlikely). The airborne laser–a 747 airplane fitted with a laser beam that would destroy enemy missiles as they blasted out of their silos, before they entered outer space–has a basic conceptual problem. First, we would have to buy 28 planes just to keep enough of them in the air at one time. Second, to get within range of the enemy missile bases, they’d have to loiter inside the airspace of, say, Iran and North Korea–and that just isn’t going to happen.

Finally, Gates was recommending a mere 10 percent cut in the missile-defense program, from $10 billion to $9 billion. This was hardly a slash job. Sessions, clearly outgunned, grumbled that he was still “concerned” about “the size” of the cut. (Lieberman and John McCain had expressed the same concern during their question periods).

Leave aside the issue of whether missile defense makes any sense or has any hope of working. (I have serious doubts and think that, in any case, the program could have been cut by a few billion more with no harm done.) The salient fact is that Gates had scrutinized the program and taken out elements that were plainly unnecessary or absurd. Sessions was looking at the program as an abstraction and its budget-figure as a symbolic show of strength. If this were anything other than the defense budget, Sessions would be derided as a paragon of senseless waste.

*  *  *

In the coming weeks, the debate over the defense budget is bound to intensify. Passions will flare. The fight may seem surreal, but that’s because it is unusually primordial; it’s stripped down to basic institutional interests. The battle, waged behind the scenes in the Pentagon, is fiercer still in Congress, because there, it’s conjoined with the struggle for contracts and jobs. (It is no coincidence that pieces of the F-22 are manufactured in 46 states; for more than a half-century, the services have been subcontracting out their most cherished weapons to as many congressional districts as possible in order to maximize political support.) (By Fred Kaplan)

Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2218407

If the American people are right, what explains today’s military budget?

The Soviet Union, which kept the Red Army poised along the famed Iron Curtain; the Warsaw Pact, which corralled Eastern and Central European states on behalf of Soviet objectives; Maoist China, which posed an unpredictable threat to the war-weakened nations of East Asia; and a gaggle of Third World countries, which allied themselves with the U.S.S.R.  American military deployments around the globe were seen as necessary to contain the advance of communism.

Two decades ago this justification for America’s anomalous, quasi-imperial system disappeared. The Soviet Union dissolved, the Warsaw Pact disbanded, China adopted the market, and Third World states jettisoned collectivism. Colin Powell famously observed that he was running out of enemies, being left with only North Korea’s Kim Il-sung and Cuba’s Fidel Castro–nasty characters, but pitiful replacements for Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Yet, military expenditures (the baseline budget excluding costs of Afghanistan and Iraq) have climbed to a peacetime record. America accounts for nearly half of the world’s military outlays.

That is, Washington is spending more today on its military now than it did when the U.S. was confronting the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact, Maoist China, and assorted Third World autocracies.

Whatever could justify such outlays?

It certainly isn’t the power of America’s enemies. The American people rightly rank North Korea and Iran as adversaries of the U.S. But neither state poses even a minor threat to America.

The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an economic wreck; a half million or more people starved to death a decade ago. The regime is largely friendless and faces a destabilizing leadership transition. Pyongyang’s large military is antiquated; though the North is developing both missile and nuclear technologies, it has no present ability to attack the U.S. and, in any case, would be wiped out by any retaliatory strike.

Moreover, the DPRK is constrained by its neighbors. South Korea enjoys 40 times the economic strength, twice the population, and a vast technological advantage. By some measures, the South’s military budget is as large as North Korea’s entire GDP.

Iran is a military midget, at least compared to America. Tehran’s estimated military outlays run about $8 billion annually–less than two percent of America’s level. Iran’s military has been untested for two decades, and much of the Iranian security apparatus is directed at domestic repression.  . . . Moreover, Iran is constrained by its neighbors, including hostile Arab states. Even more significant is Israel, the dominant Middle Eastern military power, with as many as 200 nuclear warheads.

*  *  *

[T]he European Union alone has ten times Russia’s economic strength, three times Russia’s population, and twice Russia’s military budget. China’s strength is on the rise, but it remains a relatively poor nation whose military remains far behind that of America. It will take years, even decades, for Beijing to fulfill its potential. One statistic alone captures America’s dominance: the U.S. possesses 11 carrier groups, compared to one between China and Russia.

*  *  *

Terrorism is evil, but does not pose an existential threat. Nuclear terrorism would be far more dangerous, but the production or acquisition of such weapons by non-state actors remains thankfully unlikely.

Moreover, this risk actually is exacerbated by a more imperious and interventionist foreign policy. Far more effective in combating terrorism is improved intelligence, international cooperation, use of special forces, and such non-military tactics as drying up terrorist funding.

The changed international security environment should lead to a change in U.S. force structure and military outlays. America’s business should be defense, not offense. Especially at a time of economic crisis and budget stringency, the U.S. should bring its military establishment into alignment with its defense needs.

The American people recognize what Colin Powell told us a few years ago: the U.S. is running out of (serious) enemies. It is time to cut the military budget accordingly. (By Doug Bandow)

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-bandow/how-many-enemies-how-much_b_262509.html?view=print

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