- Joined
- Jun 10, 2005
- Messages
- 26,879
- Reaction score
- 12,684
- Location
- Highlands Ranch, CO
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Agreed 1000% There is a lot of waste in defense spending. A lot of companies have taken advantage of the system and stretched out programs and gotten a lot of extra cash out of the government. I'm all for tighter regulations or choke holds on these contracts when companies don't live up to their side of the bargain. Unfortunately, who is going to put a stop to this?
There are a handful of politicians (McCain, Gramm, Warner, Lieberman, and others) who routinely block the outdated Defense Industry programs while their select General or Admiral lobbies for the next toy. And President Obama obviously has somebody wise in his ear considering the quickness the F/A-22 went to bed. But, I don't see politicians admitting that they were wrong about cutting the military numbers. President Bush was all about killing our numbers. President Clinton was fond of it as well as he rode the backs of the military from one MOOTW to the next while promoting the privatization of the military. The result is President Bush's (Rumsfeld's really) Blackwater and a broken bank.
Until they acknowledge how wrong they have been the problem will persist. Unfortunately, Washington has become a non-military member's club. How can people - who have deemed themselves too good to serve - know anything about what to fix in these regards? All they hear is some civilian in a suit or some General about to retire telling them that "nothing is too good for our troops." This is true of course, but what they give us isn't good enough. They have a history of providing toys for wars they want us to fight rather than the wars we are going to fight. Money gets wasted and China still hasn't attacked. In the mean time, our troops needed body armor and NBC suits in 2003. No money for such things, but here's another 10 F/A-22s that won't be used in either Iraq or Afghanistan (because they are too expensive to risk).