Today's Stories

October 9, 2008

Robert Bryce
From Enron to the Current Meltdown

October 8, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Imbecilic Tedium

Linn Washington, Jr.
Palin's Racist Remark

Mike Whitney
To the Bunkers!

Deepak Tripathi
The West is Broke

George C. Wilson
Butter Over Guns? McCain and Obama on Defense Issues

Andy Worthington
Seized in Pakistan

Charles R. Larson
"I'm John McCain and I Approved This Lie"

Patrick Irelan
Ecuador's Choice

Matthew Koehler
Log, Baby, Log: Bailing Out the Timber Industry

Stanley Heller
Time to Design a New Economy

Daniel Gross
Working Class Hero: Alexandra Svoboda

Kimberly Hartke
Raw Milk and Civil Liberties

Website of the Day
Olivia Wilde Does It Early

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
The Cop-Out Election
Major Candidates, Congress, Press, All Fail in the Big Crisis

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 9, 2008

Our Shrinking, More Costly Force

Meltdown at the Pentagon

By WINSLOW T. WHEELER

It is common knowledge that the Pentagon is spending more in inflation-adjusted dollars today than at any point since the end of World War II.

The $635 billion appropriated in fiscal 2007 is $31 billion, or 5 percent, above the previous high-water mark of $604 billion in 1952. 2008 will be higher at about $670 billion, and 2009 will likely be more still.

It should also be conventional wisdom — but isn’t — that our military forces are smaller than they have ever been since the end of World War II; major equipment is also, on average, older than it ever has been before; and key elements of our most important fighting forces are not ready for combat. At new highs in spending, all that is an accomplishment of spectacular incompetence — if, indeed, that is the cause.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the human and material stress they have imposed on the forces, are not the cause. The negative trends have been around for decades. The wars have not siphoned off money from the non-war parts of the Pentagon budget, known today as its “base” budget. In fact, above and beyond the $800 billion-plus the Pentagon will have received by the end of 2008 for the wars, it has also received about $770 billion more than was planned for it in 2000. One would hope this huge “plus-up” for the peacetime, or base non-war, budget would have addressed some of the decades-old problems. It didn’t; today they are worse.

The base Defense Department budget has increased — in inflation-adjusted dollars — from $370.8 billion in 2001 to $518.3 billion in 2009, a 40 percent increase. Comparing actual Pentagon base budgets to the base budgets planned at the start of the first President Bush administration (for the years from 2001 to 2009) computes to an added $770 billion.

The “plus-ups” for each of the military services demonstrate how more money has made our problems worse.

In early 2001, the Army anticipated a budget of about $720 billion for 2001 to 2009. Not counting $387 billion subsequently appropriated for Army participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army’s base budget was increased by $191 billion to $911 billion. The war funding shown for 2008 and 2009 is incomplete; Congress has not finished action on the president’s requests for 2008 or 2009.

The Army’s “division equivalents” have declined over time to a post-World War II low in the 21st century at about 11 divisions; the Army budget is now at an all time high.

A key equipment inventory — ground fighting vehicles — continues to age while it also shrinks. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipates this inventory will continue to shrink even as the number of combat units has stabilized in the early 21st century. It is a trend that Army plans will accelerate in future years.

Evidence on readiness is also discouraging. Army budget materials for 2009 articulate a goal of 608 tank training miles (per tank per year) for 2009. This would be an increase from the 459 training miles performed in 2008. During the Clinton era, the goal was commonly 800 tank miles; for the most part, the Army did little better than 650. During the George H.W. Bush administration, the goal was typically 1,000 miles, and 800 was sometimes achieved. In other words, in 2008, tank crews are training at a level less than half of what was considered optimal in the early 1990s.

The Army asserts today that all units sent to Iraq and Afghanistan are “fully ready.” That is a suspect assertion. Training time in the continental U.S. for unconventional war has been reduced thanks to the high operational tempo and frequent, recurrent deployments of the same units back to combat after 12 months in the U.S. Only a portion of the non-deployed time is spent retraining for redeployment. More importantly, during that limited training time, units do not always have available to them the proper equipment on which to train, and the people in those units get truncated time to train together — whether or not they possess the right equipment — with new personnel.

The Army is not alone in facing these problems.

In early 2001, the Navy anticipated a budget of about $900 billion for itself and the Marine Corps for 2001 to 2009. Not counting $95 billion subsequently received for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Navy-Marine Corps base budget was increased by $174 billion to $1.07 trillion.

The fleet is as small today as at any point in the post-World War II period. From a 1953 high of 835 combat ships, it persistently hovers in the 21st century at about 300.

The budget shows ups and downs, but the overall trend is for it to increase in “real” dollars. In recent years, the Navy’s budget has increased sharply, mostly for expenses not related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet the force structure remains flat.

In the Air Force, things are worse.

Since early 2001, the Air Force has received more than $200 billion above what was then planned for its base budget. The tactical inventory of the Air Force is as small today as at any point in the post-World War II period. From a 1957 high of 61 “wing equivalents,” it persistently hovers in the 21st century at 16 to 18.

There have also been budget ups and downs, but the overall trend is for the budget to remain constant — in inflation-adjusted dollars — and today the amount of spending for the Air Force is above the overall trend-line. Thus, at a level of spending today higher than the historic norm, we have an Air Force tactical inventory that is as small as it has ever been.

While shrinking, the overall Air Force inventory has aged further.

Given the failure of the $200 billion-plus the Air Force received from 2001 to 2009 to stem the shrinking, aging service, there is no reason to think that throwing still more money at the Air Force will do anything but perpetuate the problems.

Some advocates of high-cost weapon systems will claim that the reduced size of the military force structure is offset by advances in capability thanks to modern technology. The advocates of these arguments are quick to skip over the aging nature of these high-tech inventories and the serious readiness problems.

Advocates of high-cost, high-complexity weapons also skip over two other key attributes. First, the equipment is far more expensive than they allow. They describe costs in terms of the “fly-away” unit cost that ignores development and testing expenses, and they routinely understate the cost relationship with equipment being replaced. Systems end up costing far more than what is promised at the “buy-in” stage, and they often cost multiples of what they are replacing, even more when all support costs are considered. Second, the advocates grossly overstate how well complex systems perform, both initially in theoretical discussions and in combat after they are deployed. For some systems, real improvements do occur, but they are far less than what is advertised; other times, the new, far more expensive system brings no meaningful improvement and by virtue of the reduced, less-ready force size, real-world capability is lessened.

There is no silver lining to the shrinking, aging, less-ready, more-expensive cloud.

About the $191 billion plus-up for the Army, the $174 billion added for the Navy, and $203 billion for the Air Force, it is reasonable to ask, “Where did the money ($568 billion) go?”

PORK

Congress added about $60 billion in pork to post-Sept. 11 defense bills. The impact on national defense is a matter of apparent indifference to Congress.

HARDWARE COST GROWTH

Since 2001, spending for hardware has exploded. The added money has often meant fewer weapons.

If one inspects the Defense Department's Selected Acquisition Reports for just before and at the end of the |current Bush administration, one finds two types of pathologies: programs that increased in cost, and programs that increased in cost to buy fewer weapons. For example:

In 2000, the Defense Department planned to buy 458 V-22s for the Marines for $38.1 billion (unit cost: $83.2 million). In 2007, the same 458 V-22s were rescheduled to cost $54.2 billion (unit cost: $118.3 million).

In 2000, 30 Virginia class submarines were going to cost $65.7 billion; today, the same 30 will cost $92 billion. Unit cost increased from $2.2 billion to $3.1 billion.

In other cases, we don’t get the same quantity for more money; we get fewer systems for more money.

In 2000, the Air Force promised 341 F-22 fighters would cost $61.9 billion ($181.5 million each). Today, the estimate is $64.5 billion for 184 aircraft ($350.5 million each). Program cost went up 4 percent. Unit cost went up 185 percent. The inventory to be bought shrank by 46 percent.

In 2000, the Navy projected 12 LPD-17 amphibious assault ships for $10.7 billion ($891.7 million each); today, we are to expect nine LPD-17s for about $14 billion (about $1.6 billion each). Program cost went up 33 percent; unit cost went up 179 percent; inventory went down 25 percent.

Taken together, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that from 2000 to 2007, major system costs escalated by $295 billion.

Some of these systems never have and never will appear in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given their irrelevance to war as we currently know it, one must also consider whether not just the cost growth should be considered waste but also the entire cost of the program.

PEOPLE COSTS

People, certainly the ones in uniform, are not irrelevant. They enable America to fight, and, assuming competent strategic leadership, they are central in determining whether America wins or loses the conflicts it decides to fight.

Basic people costs in the Pentagon have been increasing, per capita, for decades. The Congressional Budget Office measures this real growth at 1 percent to 2 percent per year. In the new century, that growth has accelerated. Congress has accelerated pay raises for all in uniform, and it has enacted the Tricare for Life health care system that — while popular — has proven far more expensive than first predicted. And, Congress has repealed previous military retirement cost reforms and has layered on additional benefits for veterans and their survivors.

In a time of conflict, it is probably unavoidable that Congress adds to these benefits — to express the nation’s appreciation for service rendered in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, these benefits apply not just to the men and women who have served in those conflicts; most have been generalized to any service member regardless of when or where they served. In 2000, 1,449,000 active-duty personnel cost $100.5 billion in constant 2009 dollars for pay and benefits in the Defense Department’s military personnel account. In 2009, 1,445,000 active-duty personnel, a reduction of 4,000, are expected to cost $128.9 billion, an increase of $28.4 billion, or 28 percent. Once again, we pay more for less.

TRACKING COSTS

As decades of reports from the GAO and the Defense Department’s inspector general make clear, the Pentagon’s spending records are not reliable. The department cannot accurately assert how, when or for what it spends money today, tomorrow and yesterday. Most Defense Department components not only cannot pass an audit, they cannot be audited. Their records are so chaotic that neither the GAO nor the inspector general can track expenses.

The need for integrity in Pentagon expenses is not just a matter of satisfying green-eyeshade accountants. It also means having reliable estimates of cost, schedule and performance for programs. Habitually, at the beginning of an enterprise, the Defense Department underestimates costs, overstates performance and cites a schedule it cannot maintain. Real reforms could be simple, but vested interests with all the power in today’s system will oppose them vehemently.

Ending the addition of billions of dollars of dubious pork projects to defense bills each year would require a process to sort out the junk from the worthy projects, if any. Members of Congress who argue that their earmarks are good ideas should have no problem with competent, independent evaluation of their proposals and a good-government process for implementing them. In short, any earmark proposed to any defense (or any other) bill should have:

An estimate from the Congressional Budget Office for all costs, past, present and future.

An evaluation from an independent entity (one with no material interest in the project, which eliminates the Pentagon) to determine if the project is needed and, if needed, whether the proposed solution can be effective. In most cases, GAO can and should provide such evaluations.

A requirement that any earmark that successfully emerges from the CBO and GAO evaluations must be submitted to a competitive bidding process, for initial and for any follow-on work.

Weeding out irrelevancies from the military services’ budgets should be performed by an independent panel. While the views of the military services and of other interested parties should be heard, their membership on any such review panel must be barred for it to have credibility. Similarly, retired military officers who have any pecuniary relationship with defense corporations must also be barred. And finally, any person accepting membership on the panel, as well as staff, should be barred from accepting any future position with any entity that can gain from the panel’s decisions.

FINANCIAL INTEGRITY

Commensurate with a review panel should be a pause in new contracting and other expenses in the Pentagon, other than contractual obligations already incurred and war expenses that must be paid. New contract obligations and new program, or milestone, decisions should be held in suspension. The purpose of this important step is to permit the program review panel to operate in an atmosphere of seriousness and purpose, and to force the Pentagon to start down the long-avoided road of financial management integrity.

While new spending is suspended, the Pentagon’s audit agencies and qualified public accounting firms should undertake a maximum effort to audit the entire Pentagon system. The basis for understanding current programs and the financial consequences of new decisions must be established. Without doing so, there is little hope the hardware review panel will be able to understand the consequences of its own decisions. It is also a fundamental question of the Pentagon finally putting aside its empty promises and to actually fix its financial accounts so that future program enterprises are initiated in a system that understands the future consequences of its current decisions.

After the initial audit, any program, project or activity that has not received a clean audit should be placed on a public watch list for special oversight and frequent periodic reports to the defense secretary and Congress. Programs and their managers that fail should be noted, and new money for programs and promotions for managers that cannot pass an audit should be suspended, except for programs — but not managers — that the Pentagon and Congress jointly certify as essential despite their fiscal turpitude.

Failure to fix the Pentagon on this essential measure will mean that none of the other reforms will be meaningful. How can you control an acquisition process that you cannot accurately measure in terms of cost, schedule and performance?

High personnel costs for an all-volunteer army in a time of conflict are unavoidable. However, Congress’ undoing of past reforms for military retirement and concurrent receipt of veterans and retirement benefits are reasonable candidates for reconsideration. Other cost-saving reforms may also be possible, as long as military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are provided the best health care and other appropriate benefits the nation can afford. Unfortunately, Congress has not shown itself capable of much restraint in this area. Perhaps a reliable audit of the costs these legislative actions have piled up, now and in the future, will give some the impetus to start an inquiry.

In a system that measures merit by the amount of money spent, these changes will meet huge resistance. It remains to be seen if a leader will emerge on the American political scene — either from Congress or the White House — to make meaningful reform a reality.

But that’s what elections are for in a working democracy.

Winslow T. Wheeler spent 31 years working on Capitol Hill with senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office, specializing in national security affairs. Currently, he directs the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington and is author of The Wastrels of Defense. 

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