TheWiseOldFart

The annual budget for the Pentagon is nearing one trillion dollars. The first time I wrote this number, I was appalled. $1,000,000,000,000. That is 1,000 billion dollars. No working man could possibly imagine how much money that is. The truth is one-half of their annual budget is wasted, according to a non-profit watchdog organization. A couple examples of our military’s fiscal failures. I researched the F-35 fighter a number of years ago. The project was approved in 1995. Testing was completed in 2021. It was approved for mass production, although I cannot find any information about where or if it is in full production in 2025. [The average flyaway cost of an F-35A (the conventional takeoff and landing variant) is around $82.5 million. The F-35B (vertical takeoff and landing) has an average flyaway cost of $109 million, and the F-35C (carrier-launched) is priced at $102.1 million. These prices are for production lots 15-17, which were delivered in 2023, 2024, and 2025.] The F-35 is th...

Our nation’s leadership at all levels is dominated by hypocrisy. One issue I have addressed multiple times involves our nation’s military who serve in war zones at the will of Congress and the Pentagon. It’s been the same old story all of my life, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon tells Congress that they need more troops to win the war, and they say how many. With each increase in the number of soldiers ready to give their lives for who knows what, the number of body bags is doubled. The fat asses who sit in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill will not be risking their lives or the lives of their children in battle. The irony is that our military leaders have lost every illegal and immoral war since WWII. The sad truth is that none of the young men I knew who were forced to fight in Vietnam knew what they were fighting for. I make an admission here about my negative personal feelings for the military. However, it has no influence in this story. In the mid 1960’s the war ...

Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   Watchdog groups claim that fifty cents out of every dollar receiv ed by the Pentagon annually is waste d. It was clear during the George W. Bu sh Administration that the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq helped the Bush family, Dick Cheney, and Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz become multi-billionaires.    “War is good business .” Investing in the military industrial complex makes billionaires out of millionaires.     THE UNITED STATES MILITARY IS POWERFUL, AND FUNDED FIVE-TIMES MORE THAN ALL OTHER NAITONS COMBINED   The annual budget of our nation’s military is nearing one-trillion dollars per year. This, combined with the fact that this amoun t is five-times more than all other nation’s combined should guarantee victory in any military conflict, large or small. So, let’s look a t history.   The Korean Conflict occurred between Jun 25, 1950 – Jul 27, 1953 . When the conflict ended, there was no winn er. T...