One of the Reasons the Country is so Broke, with no Hope for Real Change

posted by Bill Arnett @ 12:03 PM Permalink

From the washingtonpost.com:

Government auditors issued a scathing review yesterday of dozens of the Pentagon's biggest weapons systems, saying ships, aircraft and satellites are billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.

The Government Accountability Office found that 95 major systems have exceeded their original budgets by a total of $295 billion, bringing their total cost to $1.6 trillion, and are delivered almost two years late on average. In addition, none of the systems that the GAO looked at had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages.[…]

"Flagship acquisitions, as well as many other top priorities in each of the services, continue to cost significantly more, take longer to produce, and deliver less than was promised," Dodaro [ Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the GAO. Bill] said. "This is likely to continue until the overall environment for weapon system acquisitions changes."

I have an absolutely smashing idea, why don't we just stop spending money at all on future combat systems and instead concentrate on educating our society and its people until we all have learned the futility of trying to make peace while you're spending the country into poverty - a major cause of war.

I wonder how many people could be housed, fed, given medical attention, and educated with that $1.6 TRILLION dollars? And why don't we do it?

Just because bush or McLame or anyone else says we need to make war for one stupid reason after another?

"This is likely to continue until the overall environment for weapon system acquisitions changes." So let's change from producing weapons and invest in our greatest asset, our people.

And yeah, I've been around long enough to realize a pipe dream rarely, if ever, comes to fruition.

Labels: Budget, military industrical complex, preemptive war, war, wmds