Classified Military Spending

By far, the United States has the largest military in the world. That makes Bush the most powerful leader in the world. And by far, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are the second and third most powerful individuals in the world. Increasingly, it has become difficult to trust these three men.

I have no problem with national defense. But I'm bothered by the increasing budgets for secret military spending in a world where there is no longer a second superpower that somewhat matches our strength. What is all these excess of power for? And where is the money going to justify our huge military budget? And I'm astonished that Republicans seem largely uninterested in an obvious question: where's the pay-off? Here's a story by Drew Brown of the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau:

Classified military spending has reached its highest level since 1988, near the end of the Cold War, a new independent analysis has found.

Classified, or "black," programs now appear to account for about $30.1 billion, or 19 percent, of the acquisition money the Defense Department is requesting for fiscal year 2007, according to Steven M. Kosiak, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, an independent policy-research organization.

The figure is more than double the amount the Pentagon requested in 1995, when classified military acquisition spending reached a post-Cold War low. It apparently reflects an increase in intelligence funding and a surge in new weapons research and procurement since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Drew Brown is referring to acquisition money which I suppose refers to the purchase of hardware; at least that's how I read his article. So that begs the question of how much other money is going to 'black' operations (I'm not sure what the official term would be), including the NSA domestic spying, overseas special forces operations or the kinds of destabilization games that Rumsfeld seems to have in mind or other covert operations?

And I'm not sure how much of the identified military spending is going towards contractors, mercenaries and paramilitary types which may be getting funding through 'normal' channels. The fact of the matter is that other than the $30 billion plus (pick a number) for 'black' programs for which we cannot expect much accounting from this administration, there has been very poor accounting of where tens of billions of our 'normal' military and intelligence money has been going in the last five years. As long as Republicans remain in control of Congress, it does not appear that Americans will receive the answers.