The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute released a report a couple of months ago on the world’s military spending. The numbers don’t look too comforting for the United States.

While I’m very sympathetic to the arguments of letsgetitdone and others that the deficit simply isn’t a problem our government should be concerned with right now, political realities dictate different behavior from our politicians. People still list the national debt as a concern unprompted due to decades of brainwashing by the business-friendly right wing in this country. This leads less brave or creative politicians to disastrous ideas like the cat food commission.

News of Gen. Petraeus’ directive for secret Pentagon operations would be a huge revelation if history didn’t indicate that departments handling foreign and domestic defense or security operations have claimed the authority to engage in covert activity time and time again. From the Bush Administration to the Kennedy Administration, covert operations have been standard operating procedure, so long as those in power can get away with it.

The Senate passed $636 billion annual budget for defense 88-10 but can’t find 60 votes to come up with less than $100 billion annually for health care for Americans in need. That says something execrable about our Senate and a lot of the people in it.

Often times, people see as a cause for terrible events whatever it is that annoys, angers, or frightens them, regardless of the facts. The reaction to the recent shootings at Ft. Hood are a case in point.

Hypocrisy and opportunism are nothing new, but when it’s this blatant? Somehow, I don’t think the defense industry will grind to a halt, but the reaction to this news should be fun to watch.

President Obama’s order this week to cut $100 million in administrative costs from federal programs over the next 90 days sends an important message. As the President acknowledged himself, the $100 million is more a tone-setter than a meaningful sum in a federal budget of over $3 trillion. Instead, his words put front and center the longer-term goal of eliminating waste to help reduce the deficit and pay for health care, education, and other programs critical to rebuilding our economy.

Two developments illustrate the Pentagon’s ongoing efforts to control the media conversation on war and war spending.

First, the leak of the NATO “master narrative” on the war in Afghanistan details exactly how and where military commanders are instructed to shade the truth.

On the other side of the ledger, the Obama administration is requiring that Pentagon officials sign non-disclosure agreements before discussing the upcoming Pentagon budget, an expansion of Bush era secrecy rules. Wait, what?

An important collection of essays was recently published under the title America’s Defense Meltdown, and best of all it is available for free download. The authors have all spent their careers in or around the defense establishment, and in this sense they are insiders. But they are also outsiders. To a man they are all either veterans of the military reform movement that was brought to life in the late 1970s by the sheer force of intellect and personality of the then recently retired USAF Col. John Boyd, or they were subsequently influenced by his work and example. After the movement’s brief flowering in the early 1980s it largely dropped off of the radar screen. Boyd left us nearly a dozen years ago, but now as we spend more and more on defense and get alarmingly less security for it, his protégés and pupils have taken up the cause with vigor. Signing up with this renewed reform movement is a win-win proposition for progressives.

Defense Business Board says current Pentagon procurements are not sustainable.