What a terrible thing to read before breakfast. My personal philosophy is best articulated by this: "..the people themselves have enjoyed the Keynesian benefits of the U.S. imperial project and—in all but a few cases—have not yet suffered any of its consequences."

That bill is coming due real soon.

In the end, the slow concentration of power in the Executive Branch is what's going to do us in. I've yet to see a President try to dial it back, but it'd make for an interesting campaign strategy.

Posted by: steven at March 23, 2007 8:20 AM

The U.S. Department of Defense, headquartered in the Pentagon, is one of the most massive organizations on the planet, with net annual operating costs of $635 billion, assets worth $1.3 trillion, liabilities of $1.9 trillion and more that 2.9 million military and civilian personnel as of fiscal year 2005.

It is difficult to convey the complexity of the way DOD works to someone who has not experienced it. This is a massive machine with so many departments and so much beaurocracy that no president, including Bush totally understands it.

Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and "Rice Bowls" which are never mixed.

Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exhorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon's many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 10 years.

What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing and SAIC. If you would like to read how they control our government, please see:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703

Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues - with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.

Please examine the following link to testimony given by Franklin C. Spinney before Congress in 2002. It provides very specific information from a whistle blower who is still blowing his whistle (Look him up in your browser and you get lots of feedback) Frank spent the same amount of time as I did in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) but in government quarters. His job in government was a similar role to mine in defense companies. Frank's emphasis in this testimony is on the money the machine costs us. It is compelling and it is noteworthy that he was still a staff analyst at the Pentagon when he gave this speech. I still can't figure out how he got his superior's permission to say such blunt things. He was extremely highly respected and is now retired.

http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm

The brick wall I often refer to is the Pentagon's own arrogance. It will implode by it's own volition, go broke, or so drastically let down the American people that it will fall in shambles. Rest assured the day of the implosion is coming. The machine is out of control.

If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting on this blog entitled, "Odyssey of Armaments"

http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html

On the same subject, you may also be interested in the following sites from the "Project On Government Oversight", observing it's 25th Anniversary and from "Defense In the National Interest", inspired by Franklin Spinney and contributed to by active/reserve, former, or retired military personnel.

http://pogo.org/

http://www.d-n-i.net/top_level/about_us.htm

Posted by: Ken Larson at March 23, 2007 10:22 AM

Well, you'll have us laughing all the way to hell. Damn you can string those words together.

Posted by: yahmdallah at March 23, 2007 10:49 AM

Ken Larson, I bow deeply to your superior knowledge and am in a froth of gratitude for your generous commentary. I nominate you for the Dregressional Medal of Honor, Knighthood, and Papacy.

Seriously: bless you, Good Sir, for taking the time to help educate our little corner of the pajamasphere.

I highly recommend checking out Ken's blog, which has all the benefits of Ken's wisdom and experience, and nice photos besides.

Posted by: Cintra Mc USS Abraham-Lincoln III at March 23, 2007 11:20 AM

The wheels within wheels within wheels. The CW-Lady is seeing them. The National Intelligence Estimate is spooky in its prescience, but the sheer weight of this evidence is only outdone by the mammoth hubris and truly systematic(!) refusal of our government to even bother to extract itself from these structures of deceit. WHY bother, when half the nation (HALF!) is quite content to be spoon-fed their daily ration of Menu Foods Wheat-Glutenized Rat Poison Kibbles & Bits? Please.

Yeah--greed, avarice, and imperial gluttony spun the web and the Spider spins it nice and shiny all over again nightly, whenever some Truth Missile manages to pierce through without being trapped and sucked to a lifeless husk. The idea of accountability is a just such a lost friggin' concept in this nation right now. And that's only *one* dead-in-the-water "American slice o' Pie" concept that actually worked, once upon a time.

Wings--important wings--have been clipped in so many ways, you could stuff a pillow the size of TEXAS or GWB's ego (same size). But the dissemination of this kind of information can only help. One hopes that we've all got the optimism to start believing that. Do we? Really?

Posted by: Ian at March 23, 2007 3:12 PM

>Menu Foods Wheat-Glutenized Rat Poison Kibbles & Bits?

Please let me rephrase that to:

"Menu Foods Wheat-Glutenized Chinese Rat Poison Eukanuba Gravy Chunks."

I understand that the Kibbles & Bits people did NOT, in fact, outsource their product manufacturing to rodent-killing fields of Asian grasses. It was only the "premium" brands--you know, the ones that advertise a sort of superior all-American wholesomeness and integrity.

Which is, in itself, perhaps a fitting metaphor for the whole Damnation Game, but what can you say?

Posted by: Ian at March 23, 2007 4:48 PM

"you know, the ones that advertise a sort of superior all-American wholesomeness and integrity."

the ones that are manufactured in Canada? Even our All-Americanism has been out-sourced. *head explodes*

Posted by: steven at March 23, 2007 5:17 PM

Didn't Gore Vidal suggest that the Pentagon was the real government, the Prez and Co ,just shadowy window dressing.

Maybe the social experiment that is America has just gone wrong, both culturally and economically. The Roman moment, possibly. Probably.

in the States we used to argue towards the middle, now, thanks to the military complex, drug/talk therapy/nutty fungelicals, litigiousness, etc, it would appear we're simply a country that cannot cope.

London has replaced NY as financial capital, the middle class is mad, maybe, there will be an economic revolution. The mortgage meltdown. Appears real, much more than 'a correction'....

IPO's no longer want to get it going on in the States..we can park those babies next to the oil all day long, like we've talked about, but, it's all happening, under the radar, quietly, surely, happening...

But doubt a revolution, economic, or otherwise, we'll eat cake for as long as we can....

Posted by: bailey alexander at March 23, 2007 5:19 PM

>the ones that are manufactured in Canada? Even our All->Americanism has been out-sourced. *head explodes*

Precisely, Steven. But if it "reeks" of All-Americanism, our confreres will lap it up.

Presenting:

"All-American Soundbite Bite-Sized Snacks For Human-Folk" (Made in China and Blurbed in Canada!)

YUM!

(It would SO sell).

Posted by: at March 23, 2007 5:37 PM

He is amazing, thanks for turning me on to him Cintra, i really appreciate it. I swear globalization (NAFTA, FastTrack) causes everything obesity to fashion crimes against humanities. The days when unions made our clothes and shoes and the local farmer grew our food were the days when everyone looked sharp and healthy. I say bring back the 50's but with none of the racist, anti-commie cold war values.

I would love to meet Chalmers and like all of us he's spent time in the BAY AREA!

Sorry about that awful link, there are racist idiots everywhere and I think now that I've been in the Youtube mosh pit long enough, I'm just going to ignore it all to my best ability. The fact that it was a little kid being used really shocked me.
Here is a link to somewhere beautiful and yummy near where I stay when I'm in London, good cheer and fairy cakes for Fridays all!

http://www.treacleworld.com/html/awright_treacle.html

Posted by: Super Amanda at March 23, 2007 5:50 PM

You know, our revered Ken Larson, above, argues (in earlier comments) that the MIC is a systemic problem, and that our politicians are forced to depend on the information that the MIC provides, because of the vast, ungraspable enormity of the defense environment.

What my friends who have worked in the private defense industry have suggested is that the system under this administration has a tendency to promote "experts" where there is not necessarily credible expertise. "Expertise" does not enjoy a meritocracy in a political environment where loyalty is preferred to credentials. Better information is often ignored in favor of the information of "experts" who are more reassuring, personally and politically, to the vulnerable bureaucrat soliciting the information. Naturally, in such a climate, the preferred "experts" are those who appear to support the stated political agenda of the tumescently enlarged executive power that the bureaucrat "serves at the pleasure of."

So - -yeah, it's systemic, but maybe not because because of the system's inherent SIZE, so much, as because of the rampant practicce of fearful, partisan, ass-kissing/ ass-covering.

Harrumph.

Posted by: Cintra Mc USS Abraham-Lincoln III at March 23, 2007 8:20 PM

....and Steven, you're right, re: your very first comment up there. A Koizumi-like Keynesian-whiplash program of voluntary economic suffering WOULD make an amazing Democrat platform.

But that would require campaign finance reform.

Ultimately, the future of America depends on people like those virulent hickweeds that make Amanda so nervous on YouTube. They will have to stop hating brown foreign people enough to be willing to use solar panels to heat their breakfast-meat HotPockets.

Posted by: Cintra Mc USS Abraham-Lincoln III at March 23, 2007 8:38 PM

Cintra Wilson has left a new comment on your post "MILITARY INDUSTRIAL
COMPLEX - WARPED PRIORITIES":

Hey there Good Sir: You have argued (and well, and on my blog, too)
that the MIC is a systemic problem, and that our politicians are forced
to depend on the information that the MIC provides, because of the
vast, ungraspable enormity of the defense environment.What my friends
who have worked in the private defense industry have suggested is that
the system under this administration has a tendency to
promote "experts" where there is not necessarily credible
expertise. "Expertise" does not enjoy a meritocracy in a political
environment where loyalty is preferred to credentials. Better
information is often ignored in favor of the information of "experts"
who are more reassuring, personally and politically, to the vulnerable
bureaucrat soliciting the information. Naturally, in such a climate,
the preferred "experts" are those who appear to support the stated
political agenda of the tumescently enlarged executive power that the
bureaucrat "serves at the pleasure of."So - -yeah, it's systemic, but
maybe not because because of the system's inherent SIZE, so much, as
because of the rampant practicce of fearful, partisan, ass-kissing/
ass-covering.What do you think?

Posted by Cintra Wilson to Rose Covered Glasses at 8:24 PM

Cintra Wilson,

Although I certainly saw some of what you are describing in terms of "experts" in the political sense in the MIC, more often it is the carefully sculpted presentation of viable alternatives which are technically astute, but skewed in such a manner that the pols always pick the one that is desireable for going to war, testing the next weapon, getting deeper into a multi-million dollar weapons system and perpetuate the MIC.

The life-long MIC members that tie their careers to civil service, the military, industry, service contracting and the like move back and forth among each other for years, evolving good old boy mentality and details about the complex processes that they keep to themselves.

On the one hand they make the massive machine grow. It could not run without them and no politician could possibly drive it. On the other hand the machine has grown heavy, burdensome, in some cases corruption-prone and of late filled with bad decisions not due to deceit or intention so much as the nature of the beast.

Posted by RoseCovered Glasses to Rose Covered Glasses at 9:32 AM

Posted by: Ken Larson at March 24, 2007 10:55 AM

Whitney Houston lived in the town next to me in NJ for a while. I never saw her or anything but I am pretty sure she sucks...

Posted by: Brink at March 26, 2007 1:50 PM