Department Of Defense Spent $1 Trillion On Weapons Since 9/11

Mother Jones:

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 sob for "these young men that are going outside the wire over in Afghanistan, every day on patrol."

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[novenator]

07:17 PM on 11/03/2011

The military/security complex is thick in the US. They have their hands into everything, and it is their spending that has caused the majority of the national debt. One cannot seriously talk about fiscal responsibility without including massive cuts to the military machine. There is frankly no other way.

[edwcorey]

05:11 PM on 11/03/2011

Think of all the old ships mothballed and then consider that Rumsfeld sent the military into Iraq with unarmored Humvees that the soldiers, to protect themselves, had to scrape together metal junk and attach to those vehicles. The Pentagon couldn't take those old ships apart and armor those vehicles? I was telling a cousin, a Navy vet, how some office managers will spend money on worthless things to justify their budgets, rather than doing the right thing and saving their companies money. He said the military did the same thing: coming back from a tour, the commanding officer would shoot all their ammo, because if he wound up with a surplus his budget would be cut. The military is like a protection racket: "Give us your money so nothing bad happens to you." Then the CIA goes out and provokes people all over the world to resent us and strike back. And who benefits? Contractors. The oil industry. The arms merchants.

[erie]

02:52 PM on 11/03/2011

At risk of sounding somewhat callous, may I suggest that this is sort of what you get when you choose to go to war. What's really sad here is the fact that the evidence for going to war in the first place was not only underwhelm­ing, but likely criminal. There were many actors in this choice, not all of whom were given a proper chance to review all the facts before charging head-long into, what we now know was a complete debacle, and possibly a farce from the onset. Of course arguing who did what to initiate the war won't solve our economic ailments, but it may help to enllighten what drives your future vote. Peace!

[plebian43]

02:10 PM on 11/03/2011

And Rumsfeld lost 2.3 trillion in one day, 9/10/01.

[mrbeadle]

12:56 PM on 11/03/2011

Mandatory drugtesting for Generals before any more checks for the DoD are issued.
Thanks for the idea, Gov. Scott.

[somewhatodd]

12:56 PM on 11/03/2011

brought to you by the welfare republicans.

[plebian43]

01:59 PM on 11/03/2011

Be more generous when heaping praise, both the Republicrats and Democans share the blame here.

[Tater Salad]

12:18 PM on 11/03/2011

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."- Dwight D. Eisenhower

[Mudge]

11:47 AM on 11/03/2011

Let's spend that money on single payer healthcare and stop being the world class bully that we are.

[hagagaga]

11:45 AM on 11/03/2011

And how many jobs did this acquisition create?

A lot, actually.

[Jacob Black]

12:08 PM on 11/03/2011

And if we'd spent comparable sums upgrading the infrastructure of this country, we'd have created even more jobs, and produced an investment that would pay off for decades.

[Berettasskeeter]

09:58 AM on 11/04/2011

Except that the federal government has the Power to pay for the military, while it does NOT have the Power to pay for 90% of infrastructure.
Semper fi

[Protocolor]

09:30 AM on 11/05/2011

A lot? Well, yes, but still only about 1% of the number of jobs that would have been created if that cool $trillion had been invested into a national high speed rail network instead. Furthermore, most of those high speed rail jobs would continue even after the big government spending slowed to a trickle. Even better, new jobs would have continued to be created by such an HSR investment for decades to come as the nation's entrepreneurs found new ways to take make a profit off the new infrastructure and as developers discover that the property values near stations has skyrocketed, leading to a building boom.

No, the $trillion invested in weapons was no boon to the economy that the same $trillion invested almost anywhere else would have been.

[Moxo]

11:42 AM on 11/03/2011

A Trillion for weapons heer, a Trillion for weapons there, and the next thing you know we are talking about real poverty in America!

[Moxo]

11:41 AM on 11/03/2011

"In America the military bases are paved in gold".

[OooZzzzz]

11:32 AM on 11/03/2011

Quote: "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, he/she exposes herself to charges that he/she doesn't "support the troops" in harm's way.

The ultimate Catch 22. "I don't need it but you have no choice, you have to give it to me"

The U.S. vs The USSR. This is how the military still justfies their needs.

Cold War is over and the fight against terrorism eliminates many weapons systems (new/old/R&D) and the military, based on Cold War history and living in the past, continues to justify their needs to fight today's wars and most of it is obsolete on today's terrorist battlefield.

Terrorists don't have an Air Force/Navy, only scattered yet organized ground troops and the clear advantage of fighting on home turf.

We lead the world in maintaining current technologies and how did the majority of American soldiers get killed & wounded in Iraq/Afghanstan? Homemade IED's, AK47's, RPG's and home turf.

Sticks & stones vs tanks, ships and jets and the sticks & stones continues to win.

American people have no idea what their tax money is being spent on and why.

[Ramirez]

11:22 AM on 11/03/2011

A trillion dollars on weapons created American jobs. The nearly trillion dollar Democrat stimulus bill did not.

At least we got something for the money.

[too young but old enough]

11:53 AM on 11/03/2011

It didn't? Reality seems to disagree with you quite a bit.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
In case you can't read that chart, it shows that job growth increased dramatically after Obama's stimulus. I know that facts have a strong liberal bias, but you should rest assured knowing that you got far more from the money spent on that stimulus than you will ever get from the money wasted on overseas military adventurism.

The truth is, if we were spending that money on programs and infrastructure in the United States, instead of helping build up nations whose governments rally against us anyway, we'd be doing much better as a country.

[Skyler McLane]

11:57 AM on 11/03/2011

Meanwhile. Most economics point to the Bush tax cuts as created a majority of our deficit.

[doctorkosan]

11:13 AM on 11/03/2011

Our military budget is an abomination. We expend 40% of the world's total "Defense Dept" spending. We have more than 700 overseas military bases. Can anyone seriously argue this is not too much?
For our financial and moral health we must stop acting like Sparta and cut this budget in half.

[Krisgi]

11:02 AM on 11/03/2011

We should have asked the 400 wealthiest Americans to foot the bill for defending a system that only works for them.

They would still have half a trillion left over to play with.

[banker67]

06:19 PM on 11/05/2011

We can still ask if the wealthiest Americans would please pay their taxes according to U.S. law. I'm sure it would give them a fine chuckle.
Remember, according to Bloomberg News, in 2009 an estimated 50,000 of the nation's wealthiest people hid income and assets in UBS accounts, and almost certainly filed false returns with the aid of attorneys, accountants and bankers since 2001. A follow-up story had the IRS claiming 20,000 or so fessed up when offered immunity from prosecution.
The whistle-blower who handed the IRS and DOJ all the evidence to pursue UBS and their American depositors got four years for his part in the decade-long scam. So far, it appears about a dozen people have been jailed for this massive highly organized crime, but none - not one -- got a longer sentence than the guy who exposed the scam to the press, forcing the IRS and DOJ to actually do something. What a surprise, eh?

Now it seems Obama's DOJ has shed enough of Cheney's neocon appointees to begin going after a handful of the big boys behind the biggest theft of tax dollars in U.S. history. Let's hope all those GOP-appointed judges don't throw out every single case.

However futile, hope is still free. Anyway, I haven't seen a citation outlawing hope...yet.