The Truth will prevail, But only if we Demand it from Congress!
9-11 Inside Job and Neocons Hacked 2004
By Robert Scheer, Truthdig
Posted on April 3, 2008, Printed on April 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/81099/
A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you're
talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush
war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been
shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending
since World War II. Even the devastating defense spending audit
released Monday by the Government Accountability Office documenting
the enormous waste in every single U.S. advanced weapons system
failed to provoke the outrage it, and five equally scathing previous
annual audits, deserved.
This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars -- already pushing a
trillion -- in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible
enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems
purchased in the wake of 9/11. In the horror of that moment, the
floodgates were lifted and the peace dividend promised with the end
of the Cold War was washed away by a doubling of spending on
ultra-complex military equipment originally designed to defeat a
Soviet enemy that no longer exists, equipment that has no plausible
connection with fighting stateless terrorists. Example: the
$81-billion submarine pushed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presumably to
fight al-Qaida's navy.
That's the huge scandal the media and politicians from both parties
have studiously avoided. But as the GAO's authoritative audit
details, the costs are astronomical. The explosion of spending on
expensive weaponry after 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the
attacks of that day. The high-tech planes and ships commissioned for
trillions of dollars to defeat an enemy with no navy, air force or
army, and using $3 knives as its weapons arsenal, were gifts to the
military-industrial complex that will go on giving for decades to
come.
The Iraq war may end someday, but rest assured that major weapons
systems, once commissioned, have a life-support system unmatched in
any other sector of public spending. Rarely does the plug get pulled
on even the most irrelevant and expensive war toy. Not while both
Democratic and Republican politicians feed at the same trough, and
when so much is at stake in the way of jobs and profit.
Just how expensive and wasteful this is was marked in the GAO's
audit: "Since 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) has roughly
doubled its planned investment in new systems from $790 billion to
$1.6 trillion in 2007, but acquisition outcomes in terms of cost and
schedule have not improved." Pentagon cost overruns, always a huge
problem, have mushroomed. As the GAO reported, "Total acquisition
costs for major defense programs in the fiscal year 2007 portfolio
have increased 26 percent from first estimates, compared with 6
percent in 2000."
I know eyes glaze when government budgets are discussed, but keep in
mind that defense spending accounts for more than half of all the
federal government's discretionary spending. In short, funding for
all the other stuff we argue about -- science research, education,
Arabic translators, insuring uninsured children -- is minor compared
to the waste on these military boondoggles that go unexamined.
Yet nothing else the federal government does involves such waste
because we are talking about weapons systems shrouded in secrecy and
protected from unwelcome scrutiny by the Teflon coating of "national
defense." Credit the GAO for providing a rare glimpse into the most
egregious waste of taxpayer dollars, concluding in its exhaustive,
205-page report:
"Of the 72 programs GAO assessed this year, none of them had
proceeded through system development meeting the best-practice
standards for mature technologies, stable design, or mature
production processes by critical junctures of the program, each of
which are essential for achieving planned cost, schedule, and
performance outcomes."
That's a grade of zero for every major weapons system. Let's take
just one, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program estimated to be
worth $300 billion in sales to its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin,
the nation's biggest defense contractor and most generous donor to
lobbyists and politicians' campaigns. The program to build what
Lockheed boasts is "the most complex fighter ever built" is also the
most expensive, with estimated acquisition costs having increased a
whopping $55 billion in just the last three years.
Lockheed need not worry about future profits, because the
procurement schedule on this troubled plane has been stretched out
to the year 2034. As the GAO says, "currently unproven processes and
a lack of flight testing could mean future changes to design and
manufacturing processes." Hey, no problem, Lockheed will just add
that to the taxpayer tab. Maybe by 2034, the plane will be ready to
go take out Osama bin Laden. Or not.
Robert Scheer is the co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us
About Iraq. See more of Robert Scheer at TruthDig.
© 2008 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/81099/
