Chalmers Johnson has an article up at Asia Times regarding the passing of a $612 billion defense bill in the middle of the financial crisis. If you’ve never read his books……do. He’s brilliant.

There has been much moaning, air-sucking and outrage about the US$700 billion that the US government is throwing away on rich New York bankers who have been ripping us off for the past few years and then letting greed drive their businesses into a variety of ditches. In fact, we dole out similar amounts of money every year in the form of payoffs to the armed services, the military-industrial complex, and powerful senators and representatives allied with the Pentagon.

On Wednesday, September 24, right in the middle of the fight over billions of taxpayer dollars slated to bail out Wall Street, the House of Representatives passed a $612 billion defense authorization bill for 2009 without a murmur of public protest or any meaningful press comment at all. (The New York Times gave the matter only three short paragraphs buried in a story about another appropriations measure.)

The defense bill includes $68.6 billion to pursue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is only a down payment on the full yearly cost of these wars. (The rest will be raised through future supplementary bills.) It also included a 3.9% pay raise for military personnel, and $5 billion in pork-barrel projects not even requested by the administration or Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

It also fully funds the Pentagon’s request for a radar site in the Czech republic, a hare-brained scheme sure to infuriate the Russians just as much as a Russian missile base in Cuba once infuriated us. The whole bill passed by a vote of 392-39 and will fly through the senate, where a similar bill has already been approved. And no one will even think to mention it in the same breath with the discussion of bailout funds for dying investment banks and the like.

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It doesn’t seem to me that they’ve avoided a recession.

Two enormous clouds remain for whoever becomes president: the housing slump and the banking crisis. Both are far from being finished yet.

Is the worst over? Are we on the road to recovery? Will the next president take office against a backdrop of economic improvement, as Bill Clinton did in 1993? Or has something deeper and more intractable gone wrong?

Early this year, the optimists, including Citigroup chairman Bob Rubin and Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, argued that the slowdown was short-term and that a “stimulus” package should be “targeted and temporary.” This with rare haste the Democratic Congress enacted. As a result, most taxpayers got one-time $600 checks in May, prefigured by bubbly messages touting “Good News!” if you filed your taxes electronically.

The rebate isn’t the only little Dutch boy thrown headlong at the dike this election year. Government spending, especially for defense, will be up: Military spending as a share of gdp is expected to grow by $75 billion in fiscal 2008, enough to neutralize a 0.3 percent decline in gdp. Dick Cheney was secretary of defense for Bush 41; just before the 1992 election he engineered a big run-up in outlays, as the military restocked following the first Gulf War. (It was exposed in the first Clinton “Economic Report.”) Is the Pentagon up to that trick again? I’d be astonished if it were not.

More at Alternet

For the most part, the Democrats haven’t done a thing to cut back on the grossly overbudgeted defense spending.

The Pentagon’s budget has always made up a large portion of government spending. But defense spending could more than double between the start and finish of the Bush administration. In 2001, the Pentagon budget was $302 billion, plus $17 billion in emergency funding for the war on terror. The budget that President George W. Bush sent to Congress in February calls for a record $515 billion — not including the $165 billion requested in emergency spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More at The Washington Independent

From the New York Times:

The classified budget of the Defense Department, concealed from the public in all but outline, has nearly doubled in the Bush years, to $32 billion. That is more than the combined budgets of the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Speaking of military spending……….

The Pentagon’s work to combat weapons of mass destruction has been so splintered and uncoordinated that officials cannot be sure what spending is accomplishing, whether “U.S. interests are protected” or even whether America “can properly respond to attack.”

That is according to a Department of Defense Inspector General report, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deseret Morning News. It was originally classified “For Official Use Only,” but the Pentagon provided a declassified copy that censored sensitive information.

The report says that because of its findings, Pentagon officials are now taking steps to improve coordination of work that has been spread among 40 offices and commands.

The report is of special interest to Utah because its Dugway Proving Ground is where many defenses against biological, chemical and radiological weapons - the main weapons of mass destruction - have been tested, sometimes amid controversy about how safe those tests are.

The Inspector General reviewed Pentagon initiatives against weapons of mass destruction and issued a report on March 30 (but the Morning News obtained a copy only this month). It complained that such Pentagon work had too little coordination and too little central oversight.

More at the Deseret Morning News

How’s the song go……..MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY……….MONEY

Envision an aircraft carrier in the sky. Drugs that can immediately prepare soldiers for duty at high altitudes. Prosthetic limbs with something approaching real sensitivity.

The Pentagon has.

For half a century, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - a low-profile but vital division of the Defense Department - has developed technologies to confound America’s foes and comfort its friends. The agency has been the force behind dozens of weapons, from the M-16 rifle and night-vision goggles to smart bombs and stealth aircraft.

Now, DARPA is planning for a long war in which U.S. troops will be expected to face guerrilla adversaries. And just as during the Cold War, DARPA is counting on high-tech Silicon Valley to give U.S. forces the edge.

“We need to anticipate all of the challenges and discover the technical means to conquer those challenges,” Anthony Tether, DARPA director, told more than 3,000 scientists, entrepreneurs and military leaders who gathered in Anaheim earlier this month for the agency’s 50th anniversary conference.

Full article at SFGate (see what Chalmers Johnson has to say about this)

From the Nation:

By John Nichols

In a Congress where it has become fashionable to gripe about earmarks of a few hundred thousand dollars to pay for small-town museums and urban parks - and, until last week, for construction and repair of bridges - the most expensive waste and corruption is always contained in the annual Department of Defense appropriation. Nowhere in the whole of the budgetary blueprint for allocating tax dollars could a serious observer of federal programs find more bloat, inefficiency, hidden excess and overt overspending that in the Defense plan.

Yet, while members in both parties preach from their bully pulpits about the need to do away with earmarks, the House with virtually no debate on Sunday approved $459.6 billion in new money for the Pentagon. You want earmarks? “This bill has more than 1,300 earmarks. The notion that these had proper review is simply not reasonable,” said Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who gave a good speech but still joined the overwhelming majority of House members in voting for every one of those earmarks - and the rest of the $459.6 billion in spending.

Continue reading here

And they’re off until AFTER Labor Day. I guess it doesn’t really matter. If they’re not there, they can’t be held accountable for giving George whatever he wants. And now on to the recess appointments……….

By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House approved modest changes to President Bush’s record Pentagon budget proposal early Sunday, but Democrats signaled plans to resume a more contentious debate over the Iraq war after the August recess.

The House’s $459.6 billion version of the defense budget, approved on a 395-13 vote, would add money for equipment for the National Guard and Reserve, provide for 12,000 additional soldiers and Marines, and increase spending for defense health care and military housing.

The adjourned until after Labor Day minutes after the vote a little over an hour past midnight.

More at the AP

Associated Press
Posted at Military.com

h/t to Glenn

WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month “burn rate” includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That’s higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.

But the estimates call into question the Pentagon’s estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.

read more at MILITARY.COM

WASHINGTON - The Defense Department put U.S. troops in Iraq at risk by awarding contracts for badly needed armored vehicles to companies that failed to deliver them on time, according to a review by the Pentagon’s inspector general.

The June 27 report, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, examined 15 contracts worth $2.2 billion awarded since 2000 to Force Protection Inc. and Armor Holdings Inc.

The contracts were issued without the normal competition for government work because the military determined these companies were the only ones capable of supplying the vehicles fast enough to meet the demands of deployed troops.

Yet the inspector general’s report concluded otherwise.

Overall, Force Protection of Ladson, S.C., received 11 contracts from the Army and Marine Corps worth $417 million for a variety of vehicles, including its Buffalo and Cougar mine-resistant trucks.

Force Protection failed to meet all delivery schedules, according to the report, and acquisition officials knew there were other manufacturers that might have supplied some of the vehicles in a more timely fashion. The report does not provide the names of those possible alternative sources.

More at Yahoo News

As Security Work Increases, So Do Casualties

Billions of dollars go to these contractors, such as Blackwater. Yet, our American soldiers receive “squat” for pay and they are losing their houses, losing their jobs at home, and, in some cases, losing their families. This is an atrocity that Blackwater contractor employees are making huge salaries. One contractor pays an employee $80,000.00 a year to pump gasoline! These salaries should be reversed and start paying the soldiers of the U.S. military what they truly deserve. - JS

By Steve Fainaru
Washington Post Foreign Service

BAGHDAD — Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.

While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 “hostile actions” in the first four months.

The majority of the more than 100 security companies operate outside of Iraqi law, in part because of bureaucratic delays and corruption in the Iraqi government licensing process, according to U.S. officials. Blackwater USA, a prominent North Carolina firm that protects U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, and several other companies have not applied, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. Blackwater said that it obtained a one-year license in 2005 but that shifting Iraqi government policy has impeded its attempts to renew.

The security industry’s enormous growth has been facilitated by the U.S. military, which uses the 20,000 to 30,000 contractors to offset chronic troop shortages. Armed contractors protect all convoys transporting reconstruction material, including vehicles, weapons and ammunition for the Iraqi army and police. They guard key U.S. military installations and provide personal security for at least three commanding generals, including Air Force Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Scott, who oversees U.S. military contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

read more at THE WASHINGTON POST

By Robert Dreyfuss

Add it all up, and the US will spend nearly $1 trillion on defense, intelligence gathering and homeland security this year, even though it faces no credible state enemy. The amazing thing is that nobody dares question this extravagance, not even the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

War critics are rightly disappointed over the inability of Democrats in the US Congress to mount an effective challenge to President George W Bush’s Iraq adventure. What began as a frontal assault on the war, with tough talk about deadlines and timetables, has settled into something like a guerrilla’style campaign to chip away at war policy until the edifice crumbles.

Still, Democratic criticism of Bush administration policy in Iraq looks muscle-bound when compared with the party’s readiness to go along with the president’s massive military buildup, domestically and globally. Nothing underlines the tacit alliance between so-called foreign-policy realists and hardline exponents of neo-conservative’style empire-building more than the Washington consensus that the United States needs to expand the defense budget without end, while increasing the size of the armed forces.

In addition, spending on the 16 agencies and other organizations that make up the official US “intelligence community” - including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) -and on homeland security is going through the roof.

The numbers are astonishing and, except for a hardy band of progressives in the House of Representatives, Democrats willing to call for shrinking the bloated Pentagon or intelligence budgets are in essence non-existent. Among presidential candidates, only Congressman Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson even mention the possibility of cutting the defense budget.

Indeed, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are, at present, competing with each other in their calls for expanding the US Armed Forces. Both are supporting manpower increases in the range of 80,000-100,000 troops, mostly for the US Army and US Marine Corps. (The current, Bush-backed authorization for fiscal year 2008 calls for the addition of 65,000 more army recruits and 27,000 marines by 2012.)

Read more at Asia Times