The Department Of "Defense": Where The Hell Does Our Money Go?!

"The biggest danger is not what terrorists can do to us,
but what we do to ourselves when we’re spooked."
--Steven Flynn, former Homeland Security Advisor

    The so-called Department of "Defense", now just playing offense, couldn’t protect New York, they couldn’t protect themselves at the Pentagon from that plane (or missile, whatever), and they couldn’t  even protect the White House from United 93.  No Air Force, no Air Marshalls, no military—it was some gay passengers that brought that plane down...Well, just because they saved the White House doesn’t mean they should be allowed to get married or be allowed in the military or anything...(See below).

    The Defense Department has threatened lawyers who try to represent defendants at Gitmo.  That’s because they know that out of 400 people, there are maybe two terrorist, and 380 cab drivers and grocery store owners...and their children and grandfathers.  Now Colin Powell says it should be closed immediately.  But Mitt Romney says they should double the size.  We have to watch those bloodthirsty, pro-war Republican candidates closely.  Guiliani has John Podheretz, a nutcase who just wrote a book called "World War IV", as his foreign policy adviser (See the new "Iraqapalooza" series, coming soon.)

    We have the strongest army in the world, with the most expensive weapons. We have multi-million dollar 5,000-pound "Smart Bombs" that are laser-guided with computers. They can come down from 30,000 feet, ring the doorbell, hide behind a bush, sneak down the hallway, check out the bathroom, go down to the basement, wait three days and blow up. No wonder we "won" the war in Iraq—for three weeks.  THEY DIDN’T HAVE WMDS. What did the Iraqis have? Scuds. Which I think is a goat with a dynamite stick up its’ ass. They had mud bombs and yak grenades – of course we kicked their ass. We blew up the whole country! We pulverized the cradle of civilization.  Like Rumsfeld said, "Stuff happens."  

    The Army didn’t blow up any of the 100s of weapons caches, so the insurgency was better armed than the U.S. Army and the Marines.  Think about it—we didn’t give our poor troops armor, armored vehicles, enough weapons, there was a shortage of bullets, a shortage of water, inadequate helmets, made them do two or three tours, (in Vietnam, you did ONE only), extended tours from 12 to 15 months, and the VA hasn’t taken care of the massive numbers of soldiers with massive brian injuries (IEDs), PTSD, depression—highest suicide rates in 26 years...Yeah, "An Army Of One", indeed.  How about this for a slogan: "You're On Your Own, Motherfucker"?

    No wonder the military can’t meet their quotas.  No wonder cities like mine, San Francisco, won’t let military recruiters on their high school campuses.  As I’ve said, the Army spend four billion dollars on ads, and pays the troops less than 20,000 dollars a year(!) The Army is giving $40,000 instant bonuses.  They’re "drafting" old men,psychos, criminals, drug addicts—they even tell them how to beat their drug tests—and felons, BUT NO GAYS!

    What, do they think gay men can’t fight?  I’ve seen them – they can tear each other’s eyes out.  But Marines who have been polled say they don’t want to fight next to them.  What are they afraid of?  They’re fucking MARINES..."I AM A UNITED STATES MARINE.  I CAN WADE INTO THE ENEMY NAKED WITH NOTHING BUT A NUMBER TWO TICONDEROGA PENCIL BETWEEN MY TEETH AND WIPE THEM ALL OUT.  I AM AN UNSTOPPABLE KILLING MACHINE!!!...WHAT, THE GUY NEXT TO ME MIGHT BE GAY?...get him away from me...don’t let him cook my food!...i’m afraid to take a shower..."
 
    I’m sure other people called this one awhile ago:  The Pentagon wants illegal aliens to get citizenship if they do two years in the Army. Yeah, it’s called "mercenaries".  Bush suggested they get 12 murderers from death row and make them a squad to sneak into Iraq and take out Al Qaeda.  They thought it sounded good, until they found out Bush had just rented "The Dirty Dozen".
   
    As we all know, only the Democrats have ever really supported the troops.  Anyone who waves the flag or puts a bumper sticker on their car is not really doing shit.  The only people on the troops’ side are those trying to bring them home, like Jim Webb.  Not funny, but hey—we need to keep getting this out there.  We’re not the traitors.  I’m not anti-troops, I’m anti-war, and for good reasons.  

    The U.S. government should give up on war—they haven’t won one since World War II, and we had help there.  They lost Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq—they won in Grenada, but that’s because it was against 12 guys in a pick-up truck.  We even lose things we call "wars".  They’ve lost the "War On Poverty", The "War On Drugs", The War On Sex (See the upcoming "War On Sex" diary about abstinence education), and The "War On Terror", or as Bush calls it, "The War On Terra".  Somebody please tell the government and the military-industrial-corporate complex they can’t win a war for shit.  Give it up!

    If the Pentagon and the Dept. of Defense are the biggest arms dealers in the world, why do they need $700 billion a year of OUR money?  They secretly helped Prince "Bandar Bush" broker a deal to sell Saudi Arabia $30 billion worth of weapons, and they’re now selling them $80 billion in weapons.  This is the country that supports Sunni terrorists and sheltered Idi Amin Dada from 1979 to his comfortable death in 2003.  But they do anything the House Of Saud wants, because they own Bush’s father.  As I pointed out in the diary "Iraqapalooza", they don’t export oil from Iraq, so Saudi Arabia could make $66 billiion on profit in one year.  Exxon-Mobil also posted the biggest quarterly profit of any corporation in the history of the world: about $66 billion.  And their bathrooms STILL aren’t clean. And they still charge fifty cents for air.

    The Pentagon loves its weapons. They even spent millions to see if a Frisbee could be used as a bomb. They kept throwing it into Iran, but a German shepherd kept bringing it back. (I'm not kidding about the Frisbees.)

     We have dozens of "stealth" planes which cost over two billion dollars each. When they first came out, they were top secret, but Revell had a ten dollar model for kids. Some secret.How do you make a model of an invisible plane? What is it, and empty box with a tube of glue, you sniff the glue, you see the plane?  

    One of the ways the Pentagon blows our $700 billion a year is ordering submarines for the war in Afghanistan.  Except Afghanistan is landlocked.  So they came up with a torpedo that can fit eight men and they can shoot it onto the desert. Submarines, $1.5 billion each.  Torpedoes?  A half-million bucks each. Bush ordered 36 of them.  So we could have blown 280 dwarves into Afghanistan.  To do what?  Sneak under women’s burkas and peak?  Start a wrestling federation?  (Someone cancelled the order.)

    Lockheed and General Dynamics came up with a self-propelled howitzer.  They called it "The Crusader".  That’s sensitive to the Muslims.  Like they don’t remember the Crusades?  They remember shit from 1000 years ago.  They’re a little like a woman a man is in a relationship with.  They know the exact day and date you said the wrong thing, where you were standing, and what you were wearing, and they will remind you of it for the rest of your life.  Just kidding, women.  You aren't like fanatical Muslims--just my ex-wife, but that's my problem.

(I am indebted to the following sources: Johnathan Freedland’s article in The New York Review Of Books, Greg Palast’s "Armed Madhouse", the books of Noam Chomsky,"Legacy Of Ashes" by Tim Wiener, and as always, Keith Olbermann and "Countdown".)  

To Be Continued...

By Doug Ferrari, Comedian
dougferrari.com