http://counterpunch.com/Smaller, Older and Less Prepared
Since 2001, Congress has given the Pentagon more than $1 trillion to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the same period, Congress and the Pentagon have added a second trillion dollars to the nonwar (base) part of the Pentagon budget.
You'd think all that added money would give us larger forces, a newer hardware inventory and better trained people. Instead, the windfall made our forces smaller, older and less ready to fight.
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At $707 billion, the defense budget is today higher than it has ever been since the end of World War II. That statement has been true since 2007; under the Gates plan, it will remain so out to the year 2020 if war spending stays constant.
This spending level is unrelated to the military threat.
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What did the Pentagon and Congress do with this trillion-dollar windfall? The Navy budget received an additional $293 billion, 2011 funding increased over 2000 by 44 percent. Yet the size of the Navy's combat fleet dropped from 318 ships and submarines to 287, a decline of 10 percent.
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(Our aircraft are older than our ships.)
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so who is eating up our money? whose pockets getting filled?
snake cheney's shadow govt.?
the pentagon needs some deep cleaning out by an outside source.