Robot Pirate Ninja

Note: This is the other debate that should be happening.

We have just fought two wars, one of which is currently forgotten (sadly) in any real coverage.   I’m all for focusing on the Healthcare thing, but something I ran across the other day chapped my hide as well.

Here we are fightin an enemy that thinks in generations and plans strategy along those lines.   Ones that have found ways to counteract, ultimately, even the hardiest of weapons…simply by putting up no resistance.  What we’ve learned, IMHO, is that buying for jets we didn’t even use for those wars, when we didn’t lose any of the last ones, and we already have the next ones on the way, is idiotic.  And some silly super President-Copter in six shades of gold, or something.   It’s retared, especially when the Pentagon doesn’t want them and the CinC doesn’t need them (or want them).

Welcome to Defense Spending 101 or as it is more appropriately, Our Annual Stimulus Package.

Here’s where it went. (and didn’t go

Despite objections and veto threats from the White House, a $636 billion Pentagon spending bill passed by a 400-30 vote Thursday contains money for a much-criticized new presidential helicopter fleet, cargo jets that Gates says aren’t needed, and an alternative engine for the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that the Pentagon says is a waste of money.

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Even though the House is packed with Obama loyalists, the draw of defense industry jobs for weapons systems is strong even among the most liberal members. Typically, contractors and subcontractors are spread across the country to maximize support.

The items Gates seeks to kill mean jobs in such states as Georgia, Texas, California, Connecticut, New York, Indiana, and Ohio.

The measure also contains money for nine unrequested F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, assembled in St. Louis.

Gates appears to feel most strongly about the F-22, an ultramodern fighter aimed at maintaining U.S. dominance in air-to-air combat. But it is poorly suited for 21st century warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates wants to cut off production after 187 planes.

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Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the chief author of the defense spending measure, had originally sought $369 million for a start on 12 additional F-22s.

But after a veto threat from Obama — and a decisive vote against the airplane in the Senate last week — Murtha beat a tactical retreat and instead directed $139 million toward spare engines for the F-22 and the C-17 cargo plane.

Murtha and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., however, are not backing away from their support for the troubled VH-71 presidential helicopter, which is six years behind schedule and $6 billion over budget. The White House threatened to veto the bill over $400 million in the bill to continue production of five of the aircraft, which would be built in Hinchey’s upstate New York district.

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The bill contains $560 million for the alternative engine. The White House issued a squishy veto threat, saying Obama would kill the bill if it would “seriously disrupt the F-35 program.”

There’s even more support for $674 million for three unrequested C-17 cargo jets, which would be assembled in Long Beach, Calif. Though Gates says the Air Force has plenty of the planes, the administration did not issue a veto threat over the additional aircraft.

And, by a 124-307 vote, lawmakers rejected a bid by Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., to kill $80 million for the Kinetic Energy Interceptor, a ballistic missile defense system that’s way over budget and has yet to experience a flight test. The Bush administration had soured on the program; the project is being undertaken in Huntsville, Ala., by the Northrop Grumman Corp.

And so the bacon gets passed around, the the planes and engine get built, cared for, flown, and scrapped, never needed and never used (since WE ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH, not because space unicorns come and bring peace to the planet forever.  You can, actually, have enough guns.  And not enough butter, err, healthcare.)

So yea, that’s the Military Industrial Complex at work.  And that’s how it works.  The Congressmen bring home the bacon, the folks at home get nice, high-tech or factory jobs making weapons of war.

And every twenty years or so we get a big backlog and have to use the stuff or trash it.  Plus, there’s always some asshole out there, somewhere.

Then more money comes in, more jobs get saved, and someone gets re-elected to their home district.   Rince, repeat, recycle, every couple years.

But, yeah…that’s how it works.  The going to war to use stuff is just speculation based on the size of the military industry, the power of lobbyists, and uh, the entire lifetime of the concept of the U.S. having a permanent arms industry.