The Defense Budget was released last week, along with the other components of the FY 2008 request. In case you’re wondering, it’s a lot. The Bush administration wants $481.4 billion for the Department of Defense, a 62 percent increase over the pre-9-11, 2001 budget.
One of the first obstacles we face in trying to understand this request is the sheer size of it. Recently, the House Oversight Committee quizzed former Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer about the money he rather recklessly distributed in Iraq. It was, the committee pointed out, about $12.7 billion, all cash in $100 bills from the New York Federal Reserve Bank, weighing 356 tons. It took several planeloads to get it all to Baghdad. Now realize that $12.7 billion is only 3.8 percent of the total Defense budget. To fly the entire DoD budget, in $100 bills, would take 458 C-130 cargo planes packed to the limit. If one took off every minute, it would take almost eight hours to get them all airborne.
Of equal or greater importance, is trying to figure out what they’re spending it on. If you read the summary posted by the White House Office of Management and Budget, you may not find it exactly illuminating. The expenditures will include such matters as:
• Building partnership capacity
• Aligning infrastructure and requirements
• Adjusting global posture
Sounds like any non-profit trying to justify its grant proposal. Except in this case, the donors aren’t rich, and the organization hasn’t demonstrated any ability to “empower individuals,” or “enhance civil society.” They can kill people, though, and that seems to be the whole point of this expenditure.
To see what the money is actually being spent on, you have to go the DoD website. And here you will read, in excruciating detail, what they’re buying. For instance, they’re buying “communications equipment and electronics,” “tactical vehicles,” and, not surprisingly, “small arms and weapons.” Some are destined for the Army, some for the Navy and Air Force, and others to Special Operations Command, the Chemical and Biological Defense Program and the Office of the Secretary Of Defense.
Some of the listings are more specific, such as the “M249 SAW MACHINE GUN (5.56MM),” and others much less so, like the enigmatic “teleport program” and DoD’s idea of miscellaneous, “items less than $5 million.” What you will not find, however, is where the money is being spent. In other words, who is it going to?
If you happen to know that only Raytheon makes the LPD-17 Class Systems Integration, for instance, you can make some educated deductions. But for the rest of us, it’s a puzzlement. According to Frida Berrigan at The Arms Trade Resource Center , “It is the needle in the haystack. There really isn't a budget for military contractors, and it certainly isn't listened by company.” In fact, there seems to be a whole community of researchers who employment depends on guessing where the Defense Department is spending its money.
But, it gets worse. According to DefenseTech.org, “Since the start of the Iraq war, tens of thousands of heavily-armed military contractors have been roaming the country.” But you will look in vain throughout the military budget to find some mention of “armed guards,” “private security personnel,” or, who knows? Maybe “foreign legionnaires.”
One longtime investigative reporter who covers security and terrorism assured me that the cost of Blackwater or DynCorp mercenaries was not hidden in the semi-secret intelligence budget. Rather, he said, “it’s in the Defense budget—somewhere.” Maybe it is, but if so, it’s hiding under “special training” or “advance procurement.”
So, in the end, the public is being asked, through their elected representatives, to approve the expenditure of 9,620 tons of $100 bills, with not much more explanation than Paul Bremer gave to the Federal Reserve Bank. Which was nothing.
If I were heading the House Armed Services Committee, I think I would ask for a fuller accounting of this request. Who knows what might turn up?
--Alec Dubro |
Tuesday, February 13, 2007 11:34 AM
