Jeff Huber’s new column at the ePluribus Media Journal In An Arms Race with Ourselves, identifies the who is who in the Industrial-Military Complex, Bush Style.
What Huber reveals is who controls the roughly $500 billion that we will commit to our armed services in 2006.
More than a decade after the demise of the Soviet Empire, and with no peer military competitor on the horizon, America is in an arms race with itself.
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In 21st-century America, however, we’ve refined this form of military-industrial “bedfellowing” to a fine art. You can’t count the hands of everyone who’s knocking down a piece of the defense pie because everyone’s hands are in somebody else’s pockets. It’s a complicated web to untangle, but we can get a sense of it by starting at the top of the arms business food chain.
The industrial control of our military is documented throughout Huber’s article. In one fact-filled paragraph Huber names names and cites connections.
Civilian service secretaries, appointed by the President, responsible for weapons and equipment acquisition, largely come from the executive ranks of the U.S. defense industry. Current Secretary of the Navy and Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England is a prime example. Before entering public life, England was a senior officer with defense giants General Dynamics and Lockheed Corporation. Donald Winter, nominated to replace England as Navy secretary, is a highly placed executive with Northrup Grumman, the world’s third largest military contractor.
Huber ends his analysis with the most germane of questions:
So where’s the compelling need for America to bleed a half-trillion dollars of national treasure per year on the Department of Defense? If we were sticking it to the Soviet Union in the Reagan era with our extravagant defense spending, to whom are we sticking it now?
ePMedia contributors to Huber’s column include DEFuning, Susie Dow, Lilnubber, Stoy, Kiw, JeninRI, Standingup and Sue in KY. This short summary is also Xposted at the ePluribus Media Community site, with Jeff Huber’s full column posted at the ePluribusMedia Journal.
