Three words that make Dems in DC pee their pants:

weak on defense

That equals lots of pork to defense contractors and home districts.

Does this week's military budget include the $100 billion contract to be awarded to either Boeing or EADS for new in-flight refueling tankers?

Absolutely correct. And, that has been my biggest disappointment in Obama. I expect Clinton to be concerned primarily with maintaining her "base" of "Defense industries", but I really believed that Obama would have the courage and integrity to challenge that group. I was wrong.

I actually doubt that a presidential candidate with a good chance of winning the office could escape assassination if they advocated even minor cuts in "Defense" spending. Remember, it is hundreds of billions of dollars we are discussing here - well worth committing any crime known to man to maintain, if you are a beneficiary of that giveaway.

Debating these items would be stupid. The Presidential candidates would get nowhere with this in the primaries or the general.

Still, I think the Democratic Congress and the party as a whole would benefit greatly by associating their "support for our troops" with, say, the F-22 "zeroed out", not "cut", not phased out, but utterly killed, probably associated with closing the whole GOCO operation in Marietta, GA, -- all of it as fast and complete as possible.

It shows the public we are serious, not just the usual "cringing liberals". Trust me, the "hold harmless" fecklessness of Congress drives the almost total discounting of Congressional "jes' he'p ever'body" promises, not to mention empty rhetoric about "change". People are not dumb. They live in a mostly zero-sum world. They can smell the corruption and cowardice of Democratic Party leaders.

But, were those leaders not gutless and weak, these would still not be matters for much talk. You zero out something in a House Committee. It is like murder with a knife in an ally.

The floor debate is nominal. The Senate cannot put stuff in, and the President cannot veto what is not there.

Remember the USS American!

This is an important discussion. I believe Chalmers Johnson has already answered the question posed here. Basically he has argued that the military/industrial complex is so thoroughly integrated into our economy and political system that it cannot be dislodged through the operation of normal politics. Just like the presidential candidates cannot bring this up, neither can a sitting president be successful in cutting back military spending. Hartung mentions the boodoggle projects like the Osprey and missile defense -- clear turkeys that will never contribute anything to our real defense -- but even these will be extremely difficult to cut. Simple reason is that production and design for these systems are spread out throughout the US.

Johnson believes that real good old fashioned bankruptcy will have to happen before the military's grip on our national wealth can be broken. It is difficult to even know what that would look like but it happened to both Germany and England in the last century. Let us hope that the process won't be as painful for us as it was for them.

However, in the meantime we will likely witness new increases in defense spending and expansion of weapons programs that are useless and quite possibly an increase in the number of combat soldiers.

"Why No Debate on Military Spending?"

... because if you challenge the military-industrial complex as JFK did you end up dead.

Two efforts to post to this thread without a hit. Does this work?

The entire missile defense program is based on the Rumsfeld 1998 Commission To Assess The Ballistic Missile Threat To The United States report.

Exactly like Team B's judgments on the Soviet threat and Feith's Office of Special Plans conclusions of the Iraq - Al Qaeda connections, Rumsfeld's commission relied on "soft data", rather than the hard data as used by the CIA. Also, like the others, Rumsfeld believed the CIA consistently undermined and underestimated the threat to the US from ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles).

Rather than measuring how far a program had progressed from a known starting point, the Commission sought to measure how close a program might be to demonstrating the first flight of a long range ballistic missile. This approach requires that analysts extrapolate a program's scope, scale, pace and direction beyond what the hard evidence at hand unequivocally supports. It is in sharp contrast to a narrow focus on the certain that obscures the almost-certain.

The bozos that utilize these 'extrapolation methods' have yet to get anything right.

My third attempt to add my 2 cents worth.

The grip of the military/industrial complex over our economy and politics is immense. Chalmers Johnson has argued that normal politics cannot break its hold. He believes that only a major crises, either national bankruptcy or a devastating military setback can produce the political change that will break the military's claim over our national wealth. I tend to agree with him. At the present time our national candidates, either repubs or Democrats have no choice but to support increased investment in national "defense".

It is illogical but now that we have lost the war in Iraq, the demand has gone up to increase military spending. More funds for missile defense, more for the Osprey, more for the F22. And of course more funds to increase the size of our army. As if any of this would have changed the outcome in Iraq.

We can just sit back and weep and hope that the political reaction to the eventual bankruptcy follows the British model and not the German one -- the two imperial powers that bankrupted themselves because of WWI.

Me and Tom (that's Mr. Cruise to you earthbound, slogging grunts and dog faces) beg to differ.

We often get in trouble around the world because we spend, currently, $600 billion on "Defense."
Korea, Vietnam, (Beirut), Granada, Panama, Desert Storm, Yugoslavia, and now Iraq. We went to these places because we could and look at the cost. I contend that if you give some people the kind of toys $600 billion buys they're going to want to use them.....and they do.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm Mullen, told a Senate Committee the other day (paraphrase)
'We have by far the strongest military in the world....'

I wanted to ask him how the public benefits from having the strongest military in the world. Did it help us on 9/11? Did it help the USS Cole? The attacks on our embassies? We're bogged down in Iraq by people who have little more than small arms. How is that $2.2 Billion B-2 Bomber working out for us in Iraq?

He also said something about activating the 4th or 5th fleet to extend our influence/interests, but I couldn't get his exact words.

If we keep allowing this funding to increase as it has we certainly shall reap what John McCain said in a speech recently;
'There are going to be more wars my friends, and more casualties....'

We didn't heed Ike's warning and now not only is Social Security the "Third Rail", but so is the DoD.

4% of GDP is not an unreasonable amount to spend on defense. However, I think given the threats we face, it is excessive. We remain well ahead great power competitors such as China and Russia in the sophistication and quality of our armaments. Meanwhile, defeating Al-Qaeda will require good intelligence and covert operations, which are relatively cheap. The most cogent argument I've read for a lower defense budget is Richard Betts' recent article in Foreign Affairs. However strategically sound the argument for a lower defense budget may be, I think what prevents politicians from calling for decreased defense expenditures is not the defense industries, but the citizenry. Were any of the presidential contenders to suggest cutting defense spending, they would immediately be pegged as weak on national security, and their candidacy would be undermined. Seriously cutting defense expenditures would require a call for fiscal and strategic rationality from a figure with untouchable credibility on national security. Perhaps, the fiscally conservative John McCain could do so, if he were elected and brought his formidable will to bear on the issue.