The W Direction Revisited

The Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, is urging congress to stop the automatic cuts to the military war budget.

At the same time President Barak Obama is telling congress not to bother doing what Panetta is urging it to do, because if congress does pass such a bill, the President goes on to say clearly that he will veto any such legislation, forcing the already-agreed-to cuts to the bloated war budget.

What seems like a mix-up in the Administration's messaging was pointed out by a British source:

The so-called super committee's failure on Monday to agree on $1.2 trillion in deficit-cutting measures triggers up to $600 billion in additional defense cuts over 10 years beginning in 2013.

"If Congress fails to act over the next year, the Department of Defense will face devastating, automatic, across-the-board cuts that will tear a seam in the nation's defense," Panetta said in a statement.

"The half-trillion in additional cuts demanded by sequester would lead to a hollow force incapable of sustaining the missions it is assigned."

Republicans have vowed to prevent automatic cuts from hitting the military. Republican Representative Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, announced on Monday he would introduce legislation to prevent the military cuts from taking effect.

President Barack Obama, accusing Republicans of scuttling the committee's efforts by refusing to consider tax increases on the wealthy, said he would veto any effort to bypass the automatic trigger.

(Reuters, emphasis added). It is long past the time for huge military spending cuts, because the military is a rogue institution spilling blood and wasting American dollars all over the world (On The Size of Government).

At the same time imperialistic militarism increases the dangers to Americans abroad and at home, by creating more terrorists, rather than diminishing them by giving peace a chance (The Virgin MOMCOM, The Chamber of Corruption).

Not only that, it diminishes our economic health, increases the imbalances in our plutonomy, and perpetuates the recession (Grid and Bear It, War is the Highway 61 of the 1%).

The next episode of this series is here.

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