Taxpayers Alert: Meet the Madoff Pentagon, A Money-Burning Machine

Think of the Pentagon, and you think of security, right? Think again. The Pentagon may just be the U.S. taxpayers' Bernie Madoff. It's the biggest drag on the economy, and the reason is not because we need what it burns money on. The reason is not that the "world is a dangerous place" and we need "protection", and protection costs what it costs. We need what the Pentagon is paying our lifeblood and treasure on less than we need a huge Ponzi scheme to keep our economy from totally tanking. Chalmers Johnson at Tomdispatch really turned the world inside-out on this one.

Worried about pork-barrel spending? Maybe you should worry about the defense budget.

Given our economic crisis, the estimated trillion dollars we spend each year on the military and its weaponry is simply unsustainable. Even if present fiscal constraints no longer existed, we would still have misspent too much of our tax revenues on too few, overly expensive, overly complex weapons systems that leave us ill-prepared to defend the country in a real military emergency. We face a double crisis at the Pentagon: we can no longer afford the pretense of being the Earth's sole superpower, and we cannot afford to perpetuate a system in which the military-industrial complex makes its fortune off inferior, poorly designed weapons.

A trillion a year? On what? Oh, those wonderful, wonderful wars and their flying machines.

It is hard to imagine any sector of the American economy more driven by ideology, delusion, and propaganda than the armed services. Many people believe that our military is the largest, best equipped, and most invincible among the world's armed forces. None of these things is true, but our military is, without a doubt, the most expensive to maintain. Each year, we Americans account for nearly half of all global military spending, an amount larger than the next 45 nations together spend on their militaries annually.

Equally striking, the military seems increasingly ill-adapted to the types of wars that Pentagon strategists agree the United States is most likely to fight in the future, and is, in fact, already fighting in Afghanistan -- insurgencies led by non-state actors. While the Department of Defense produces weaponry meant for such wars, it is also squandering staggering levels of defense appropriations on aircraft, ships, and futuristic weapons systems that fascinate generals and admirals, and are beloved by military contractors mainly because their complexity runs up their cost to astronomical levels.

That most of these will actually prove irrelevant to the world in which we live matters not a whit to their makers or purchasers. Thought of another way, the stressed out American taxpayer, already supporting two disastrous wars and the weapons systems that go with them, is also paying good money for weapons that are meant for fantasy wars, for wars that will only be fought in the battlescapes and war-gaming imaginations of Defense Department "planners."

So we've got an economy about to go over a cliff, and yet we spend billions on weapons systems that we will never use, to satisfy the fantasies of admirals and generals and other military-related beneficiaries? Well...yes.

So when we talk about "stimulating" the economy, maybe we should talk about cutting spending and cutting pork. Not birth control-type nickel-&-dime pork. Big, lousy, wasteful, useless, dead-weight, sink-the-national-treasury Pentagon pork.

It has nothing to do with security, but everything to do with procurement and the good ol' boy system. Oh, and PR. Lots of lies and PR. Is that really "conservative"? Sounds very very liberal to me - as in "use liberally".

What do people struggling to make ends meet need with a 6.2-billion dollar aircraft carrier designed to fight the Cold War? It was probably commissioned, like the one named in 2009 for Bush I, to pat some old political hack/warrior on the back with his outdated dream. And we put people in prison for not paying a few thousand in self-employment taxes (which are required for anyone with over $400 in income - like he can afford to pay taxes on $400! - talk about preference for the big corporation!).

It's time to think twice about those "guaranteed" Pentagon budgets, to think twice when you think that paying for anything labeled "military" means you'll be more secure. The opposite is true. By paying for way overpriced, outdated equipment, we are sinking the whole country ... and none of those fancy flying machines, etc., will be able to lift one square mile of us out of that sinkhole.

Taxpayers, unite! Screw the Pentagon, and tell your Congresspeople they'll have to think before they spend.

Don't Keep Preston Geren As Army Sec'y, Barack!

Preston "Pete" Geren may possibly be kept on by Pres-Elect Obama as Secretary of the Army. This would be a complete disaster, as Geren was a promoter of using the Army as DOD-funded "missionary soldiers" - yes, that's right! Goodbye, Separation of Church/State as we had to say goodbye to separation of powers, separation of govt branches, and other constitutional amenities. As this article shows,

In 2004, Geren participated in the infamous Pentagon Christian Embassy video, a promotional video filmed inside the Pentagon that, at the request of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), led to an investigation by the Department of Defense Inspector General. In July 2007, the IG issued a 45-page report finding seven officers, including four generals, guilty of violating a number of DoD ethics regulations. But, because of the IG's narrow choice of which regulations to focus on, the civilian DoD officials who appeared in the video, including then Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense Geren, got off scot free.

It's his ties to the CCC (see below) that are particularly alarming:

The Christian Embassy endorsed by Secretary Geren in the video is an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC), a fundamentalist Christian organization whose far reaching Military Ministry has become entrenched in every part of the military. Geren, who was a Congressman from Texas from 1989 to 1997, first became involved with Christian Embassy through their Capitol Hill branch. He continued this relationship when he came to the Pentagon in 2001, joining the organization's Senior Executive Fellowship. To understand why having a Secretary of the Army with long time ties to any part of this organization is of such great concern, here are a few examples showing what the goals of CCC are for our military.

And what are the CCC's goals?

"Responsibilities include working with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as government paid missionaries."

and

A former CCC program director at the Air Force Academy, Scott Blum, said in a promotional video filmed at the Academy, CCC's purpose is to "make Jesus Christ the issue at the Academy" and for the cadets to be "government paid missionaries" by the time they leave.

According to MRFF (Military Religious Freedom Foundation) founder and president Mikey Weinstein,

In July of 2005, the Air Force's Deputy Chief of the Chaplains Corps, Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson, boldly asserted in a front page story in the New York Times that the Air Force's official policy would continue to be to reserve its right 'to evangelize the unchurched.' I immediately registered my shock, telephonically, directly with Acting USAF Secretary Geren. Further, I demanded that the Air Force immediately retract this completely unconstitutional religious policy statement of evangelical Christian supremacy, which must have been vetted beforehand, as it had appeared in the New York Times -- the one newspaper most despised by the Pentagon.

Geren and I spoke several times on the phone over the next several weeks.
What disturbed me the most was that he was absolutely clueless as to the constitutional illegality of his service's ignominious declaration/intention of evangelizing the unchurched.

This is an ominous precedent that does not bode well for people of other non-Christian religious persuasions, such as Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists. But it also does not bode well with the tone and character of how wars themselves are conducted, notably the Global War on Terror. It really DOES fulfill the extremists' charge that this war is a war on Islam itself, not a war against terrorism per se as a method of battling perceived injustice, etc.

Another area of concern are the indications that Geren, like many who subscribe to the views of organizations such as CCC, may see the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a religious struggle, and that our own religious freedom here in America is somehow dependent on victory in these Muslim countries.

Is this what America is all about? Promoting religious war? Are we federally-funding a crusade? Are non-Christian military men and women being pressured to "convert" in order to form "God's army"? If that's not Obama's vision of America, then it's time

to weed out those DoD officials who have been complicit in promoting or endorsing what has in recent years evolved into a full-fledged constitutionally prohibited religious test for countless members of our armed forces.

Starting with Preston Geren.

DN!: US Targeted Baghdad Hotel Before 2 Journalists Killed

Just in from Democracy Now!: "Fmr. Military Intelligence Officer Reveals US Listed Palestine Hotel in Baghdad as Target Prior to Killing of Two Journalists in 2003"

Last month marked the fifth anniversary of the US military shelling of the
Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The attack killed two journalists: Reuters cameraman
Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network
Telecinco. The Pentagon has called the killings accidental, but in this
broadcast exclusive Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) reveals she saw secret US
military documents that listed the hotel as a possible target. Kinne also
discloses that she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on Americans working for
news organizations and NGOs in Iraq.

Here's the link to the video. One quote:

One of the instances was the fact that we were listening to journalists who
were staying in the Palestine Hotel. And I remember that, specifically because
during the buildup to Shock and Awe, which people in my unit were really
disturbingly excited about, we were given a list of potential targets in
Baghdad, and the Palestine Hotel was listed as a potential target. And I
remember this specifically, because, putting one and one together, that there
were journalists staying at the Palestine Hotel and this hotel was listed as a
potential target, I went to my officer in charge, and I told him that there are
journalists staying at this hotel who think they’re safe, and yet we have this
hotel listed as a potential target, and somehow the dots are not being connected
here, and shouldn’t we make an effort to make sure that the right people know
the situation?
And unfortunately, my officer in charge, similarly to any
time I raised concerns about things that we were collecting or intelligence that
we were reporting, basically told me that it was not my job to analyze. It was
my job to collect and pass on information and that someone somewhere higher up
the chain knew what they were doing.

Now the question is: why?