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The Legacy of Bush IIPosted on Feb 5, 2008
Curb your enthusiasm. Even if your favored candidate did well on Super Tuesday, ask yourself if he or she will seriously challenge the bloated military budget that President Bush has proposed for 2009. If not, military spending will rise to a level exceeding any other year since the end of World War II, and there will be precious little left over to improve education and medical research, fight poverty, protect the environment or do anything else a decent person might care about. You cannot spend well over $700 billion on “national security,” running what the White House predicts will be more than $400 billion in annual deficits for the next two years, and yet find the money to improve the quality of life on the home front. The conventional wisdom espoused by the mass media is that Bush’s budget is a lame-duck DOA contrivance, but that assumption is wrong. The 9/11 attacks have been shamefully exploited by the military-industrial complex with bipartisan support to ramp up military expenditures beyond Cold War levels. This irrational spending spree, which accounts for more than half of all federal discretionary spending, is not likely to end with Bush’s departure. Which one of the likely winners from either party would lead the battle to cut the military budget, and where would the winner find support in Congress? Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have treated the military budget as sacrosanct with their Senate votes and their campaign rhetoric. Clinton is particularly clear on the record as favoring spending more, not less, on the military. John McCain, who previously distinguished himself as a deficit hawk and was almost in a class by himself in taking on the rapacious defense contractors, has thrown in the towel with his inane support for staying in Iraq till “victory,” even if it should take a century. It is simply illogical to call for fiscal restraint while committing to an open-ended war in Iraq that has already cost upward of $700 billion. Bush’s request for $515.4 billion for the Defense Department doesn’t even include the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which accounted for nearly $200 billion over the last budget year and which will cost at least $140 billion in 2009. Add to those numbers $17.1 billion for the Department of Energy’s weapons program and over $40 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and other national security initiatives spread throughout the federal government, and you’ll see that my $700-billion figure underestimates the hemorrhaging. McCain knows, and has frequently stated as a Senate watchdog, that much of the military spending is wastefully superfluous for combating terrorists who lack any but the most rudimentary weapons. Bush totally betrayed his campaign 2000 promise to reshape the post-Cold War U.S. military when he seized upon the 9/11 attack as an opportunity to reverse the “peace dividend” that his father had begun to return to taxpayers. Instead, Bush II ushered in the most profligate underwriting of weapons systems that are grotesquely irrelevant for combating terrorism. The U.S. already spends more than the rest of the world combined on its military, without a sophisticated enemy in sight. The Bush budget cuts not a single weapons system, including the most expensive ones, those designed to combat a Soviet military that no longer exists. Those sophisticated weapons have nothing to do with combating terrorism and everything to do with jobs and profits that motivate both Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It is not known whether Osama bin Laden even possesses a rowboat in his naval arsenal, but that won’t stop Joe Lieberman from pushing, as is his habit, for an increase in the defense budget to double the funding for the $3.4-billion submarines built in his home state of Connecticut. Nor does the collapse of the old Soviet Union—and with it the need for enormously expensive stealth aircraft to evade radar systems the Soviets never built—dissuade congressional supporters of those planes from pushing for more, not less, than Bush is requesting. Nor does wasting an additional $8.9 billion on ICBM missile defense have anything to do with stopping terrorists from smuggling a suitcase nuke into this country.
The centerpiece of the Bush legacy is a “war on terror” based on a vast disconnect between military expenditures and actual national security requirements that the presidential candidates all fully understand. The question is whether the voters and media will force them to face that contradiction or whether we’re in for more of the same—no matter how much the candidates go on about change.
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By Jingles, February 11 at 8:27 am # Time to chill out and enjoy ahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a4x4gmhbIw
By Gloria Picchetti, February 11 at 5:03 am # The Bush Legacy is just as full as a legacy can get. where to begin? Those who came & continue to come home alive from Iraq sans limbs, eyes, and/or faces. The VA that will not or cannnot care for them. Those who came home dead. The foreclosures. The bodies floating in New Orleans. Bush standing in front of the statue giving his cocky speech about recovery for New Orleans. His refusal to almost 20 countries who wanted to help the Golf Coast recovery. The FEMA trailers sold to us, the poor taxpayers, by Bush’s buddies. The FEMA trailers full of asbestos. The trailers that were put in a hurricane region to begin with. Poor children refused good health care. All children who must forsake learning to take test after test after test. Teachers who cannot teach beccause them must spend all their time preparing children for tests. Completey porous borders and coasts that should have been sealed immediately after 9/11. The destruction of as much flora and fauna as possible. I don’t know how they got away with a marine habitat in Hawaii? Hmmm? Maybe some good lobbies? Oh let us pray for better better lobbies to stop mountain top mining. That is where the land is destroyed and the people are getting sicker and poorer everyday. The mining companies “restore” the vegetation with bamboo. Deers, skunks, rabbits, rattlesnakes, bears, robins, owls don’t like bamboo. That doesn’t matter. Bush needs the poor people to go to his illegal invasion to come home sans limbs, eyes and/or faces or dead. Hey at least, the wealthy got tax cuts! Do you think Bush hears from G-d? Or do you think he is channeling Hitler?
By jingles, February 10 at 8:06 am # Re: Change even little change may be goodRecall why both nerds Ford and Carter got in?--they were chosen to silence the public uprising. It worked. Hillary is a crook and a liar. Sad thing, there is a web site called C&L;and really is a shill for the Demorats. Hillary supports it.There is no difference between Bush, McCain or Hillary--all corrupt.Israel firsters-hell with America.
By JoJo, February 9 at 7:16 pm # Purplewolfie--Then explain why so many Americans are not questioning Hillary or McCain and are voting like cattle slated for slaughter.
By yours truly, February 9 at 12:34 pm # “We put someone in the White House who is going to end the Iraq war plus turning things around here at home.” “What about staying the course in Iraq plus turning things around here at home?” “One or the other.” “Why is that?” “Either we end the Iraq war or it’ll be the end of us.”
By yours truly, February 9 at 8:33 pm # correction:please substitute “Not possible” for “One or the other”
By Jingles, February 8 at 6:18 am # Be happy--Don't wooryThere will always be aid money for Israel but in Euros.Lot’s of tainted money to bribe UN countries.
By jojo, February 9 at 7:26 am # Re: Be happy--Don't worry- Queenie Hillary really aU-got to see this video of Hillary pan handling in Israel. She will top Jr. Bush in any war crimes.
By jingles, February 8 at 11:13 am # Re: Is there a psychiatrist in the house?Shenonymous--both parties are the same.Notice that all have to support Israel and don’t impeach Bush/ ChenyDick or warn the public about the media being zionist controlled?
By Jack, February 7 at 6:49 pm # Lost our WayWaterboarding, providing $20.00 in aid to children ($300 million), while giving $267,000 per person in tax reductions to the richest 1% at the same time in a $1.4 trillion tax reduction plan, invading another country on lies - see NPR for verification of the facts. It’s hard for me to think that I’m living in the USA. I’m very conservative, but we were better than this at one time. I’m a former captain in the US Army and a tax auditor. We are going the way of Mexico, but our citizens won’t have the US to escape to for respect and a livable wage in the future years.
By Dee Kappos, February 7 at 6:17 pm # Lacking a SoulQuite literally, Bush and those around him are pure evil… http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/200 8/02/dick_cheney_damn_right_wed_do.html About a year ago, a credible UN study estimated that upwards of 650,000 people have died in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and its aftermath. For a person in the position Cheney is in to say “Damn right, we’d do it again” demonstrates his callous disregard for human life because it is muslim human life.
By markmac, February 7 at 3:03 pm # fuck ‘em . these genocidal maniacs should be tried in the hague and executed on national television . that would be good enough for a thirty share . at least ! markmac
By librochi5, February 7 at 2:05 pm # “You cannot spend well over $700 billion on “national security,” running what the White House predicts will be more than $400 billion in annual deficits for the next two years, and yet find the money to improve the quality of life on the home front.” How true, Mr. Scheer. How ridiculous that exceedingly absurd amounts of money is spent on the war, leaving the home front worse off for it. Some say that if you cut funding, then you cut support to the troops. What about the flip side? Who knew that if you increase spending for the troops, that imperative funding for their children and every needy child in this nation will be cut? Example: Reading is Fundamental. As one of the nation’s largest literacy programs, RIF strives to distribute books for kids that need them. They distribute over 16 million books a year. But with the new plan for FY09, RIF will be rendered nearly useless with proposed budget cuts. How can a non-profit that fights against illiteracy and poverty be cut in favor of increased Iraq war spending? Add Your Comment |
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