Defense spending unsavory

The Dec. 6 article “Pentagon buries report on waste” (kudos to Craig Whitlock and Bob Woodward) describes several unsavory long-term aspects of U.S. defense spending.

The first is having no top-down handle on what defense costs are and who is being paid to do what. This encourages wasteful duplicative spending, makes cost-cutting efforts impossible and mirrors our dysfunctional national practice of running huge deficits instead of reining in spending.

The second is the imbalance between the number of active duty troops (1,300,000) and the number of support personnel (1,014,000) such as defense contractors, civil service employees and other civilians. Can you say, “Too many chiefs and not enough Indians?”

The third is an intentional lack of transparency, aided by active Pentagon efforts to suppress public knowledge of defense spending. Kenneth Klepper’s observation that “You are about to turn on the light in a very dark room” is correct.

The fourth is the Defense Department’s benign neglect concerning efficiency, encouraged by legislators who prioritize bringing home the bacon above all else. It takes great institutional pride in having never been forced to be economical.

David Fietz

Springdale, Wash.