US Endless-War Budget Rolls On

[marmar]

from Consortium News:




US Endless-War Budget Rolls On

By Sherwood Ross
February 23, 2011


Editor’s Note: Another part of Ronald Reagan’s insidious legacy is that any politician or pundit who dares to question excessive U.S. military spending can expect to be denounced as “soft” on whomever the enemy du jour is.

To protect themselves from such attacks, Democrats have typically lined up behind the Pentagon’s budget almost as slavishly as Republicans have, a pattern that is continuing in the Obama administration, as Sherwood Ross notes in this guest essay:


Under President Barack Obama's new budget for fiscal year 2012, the Great American War Machine just rolls on and on.

“As it is, we're pumping ... money into sustaining a fighting force that's orders of magnitude larger than anything retained by any other country,” observed Ezra Klein of The Washington Post on Feb. 14.

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that major cuts in military spending would be “catastrophic,” Obama settled for chopping $78 billion in cosmetic cuts Gates recommended over the next five years, Klein wrote. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/022311a.html

[Betty]

1. meanwhile, in Detroit they are closing half their schools

which means 60 kids per class, and in Providence, EVERY single teacher just got a pink slip. Bin Laden could never have imagined how self destructive we are, he just had to light the match.