Americans are suffering & dying....but we have $1 trillion to spend on weapons since 9/11

[tpsbmam]

Report: Military Blew $1 Trillion on Weapons Since 9/11

Capitol Hill conservatives and Pentagon brass fighting cuts to defense spending have argued that the military is limping off the battlefield with decrepit hardware. It's quite the sob story: At a hearing last week, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), the chair of the House armed services committee, cut his remarks short to literally cry for "these young men that are going outside the wire over in Afghanistan, every day on patrol."

But a new report shows the US defense establishment is in much better shape than it claims: The DOD has blown roughly $1 trillion on shiny new tanks, ships, and jets since the 9/11 attacks—and it's often done so with dollars that were supposed to be spent on those troops on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Stimson Center study, "What We Bought: Defense Procurement From FY01 to FY10" (PDF), says the military is hardly in dire straits when it comes to funding its big-ticket items. "The services capitalized on funding to modernize their forces, especially the major weapons programs that constitute the heart of the services' capabilities," writes the report's author, Russell Rumbaugh—a retired Army officer and ex-CIA military analyst.

The study shows there's one big reason the brass are concerned about budget-cutting discussions in Congress: They've been double dipping into the taxpayer's pocket to finance weapons purchases. Of the roughly $1 trillion spent on gadgetry since 9/11, 22 percent of it came from "supplemental" war funding—annual outlays that are voted on separately from the regular defense budget. Those bills are primarily intended to keep day-to-day operations running in Iraq and Afghanistan—meaning that if a member of Congress votes against a supplemental spending bill, she exposes herself to charges that she doesn't "support the troops" in harm's way.

The rest at Mother Jones.

Americans are suffering & dying for lack of health care, food, housing, and so much more. But we have $1 trillion to spend on military goodies.

This Press TV chart shows how this has not only continued since 2008, it's escalated.




OWS!!!!


:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. And, they still can't win a war.

[valerief]

3. They're winning. The 1%, I mean. nt

[Initech]

6. Kind of hard to win a war when there's no clear goal to begin with. It's a war for profit.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Profit and "tough on terror" PR.

[Initech]

8. Or in the immortal words of Tyler Durden:

"we are the all singing all dancing crap of the world. Do not fuck with us."

[valerief]

2. Hey, without pissing away that trillion, innocent foreign people wouldn't be suffering and dying.

And rich people wouldn't get richer and that's the most important thing in the world.

[mistertrickster]

4. It makes no sense in defense terms.

Soldiers are essentially working class, ie. blue collar.

When gov't spends money on them, all you do is reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy with the wealth they have to spend. These are very good things for society in general, but it doesn't directly benefit the RICH, so we can't have that.

Funnel 300 million taxpayer dollars per jet to Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin and, damn, you're buying some very important friends who will reward you handsomely.

Military spending is essentially welfare-for-the-rich. That's why we spend so much on it.

[TBF]

5. And even more on Bush's tax cuts -

That is who is getting our money - the wealthy and the wars