Will Obama slash the military budget?

Will Obama Cut War Waste and Military Misappropriations?

There has been much speculation as to the new President's orientation toward the US military budget, which has been estimated at a total cost of one trillion dollars per year. As government spending takes center stage in Washington, President Obama is being called on by some to cut the military budget, an idea that has been largely absent from US politics for many years. Nancy Youssef explains how this is affecting the mood inside the Pentagon, while Miriam Pemberton debunks the supposed defense spending 'cut' that has been seen in various media reports of late.

How will the 'Taliban', 'Emboldened', republican Congressional Critters vote on the Iraq and Afghanistan War Funding Now?

Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities
Related to the War on Terrorism - PDF

This is money not spent for Americans on highways, bridges, schools, energy, health care, jobs, fire fighters, police, etc., nor has it been for the still ongoing occupations.

The 2 trillion dollars, Plus(with interest Plus), is on top of 2 trillion dollars Plus worth of tax cut given by republicans and the bush administration to the wealthiest of us all, no questions asked, and loudly cheered on by their supporters, the Huge majority not being of that elite class, but still thinking there's some sort of 'trickle down'.

Under cheney/bush/goper Incompetency: Inquiry on Graft in Iraq Focuses on U.S. Officers

Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.
Court records show that last month investigators subpoenaed the personal bank records of Col. Anthony B. Bell, who is now retired from the Army but who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 when the small operation grew into a frenzied attempt to remake the country’s broken infrastructure. In addition, investigators are examining the activities of Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004, according to two federal officials involved in the inquiry.

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Prosecutors have won 35 convictions on cases related to reconstruction in Iraq, yet most of them involved private contractors or midlevel officials. The current inquiry is aiming at higher-level officials, according to investigators involved in the case, and is also trying to determine if there are connections between those officials and figures in the other cases. Although Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle were military officers, they worked in a civilian contracting office.

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Former American officials describe payments to local contractors from huge sums of cash dumped onto tables and stuffed into sacks as if it were Halloween candy.

“You had no oversight, chaos and breathtaking sums of money,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who helped create the Wartime Contracting Commission, an oversight board. “And over all of that was the notion that failure was O.K. It doesn’t get any better for criminals than that set of circumstances.”

In one case of graft from that period, Maj. John L. Cockerham of the Army pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $10 million in bribes as a contracting officer for the Iraq war and other military efforts from 2004 to 2007, when he was arrested. Major Cockerham’s wife has also pleaded guilty, as have several other contracting officers.
In Major Cockerham’s private notebooks, Colonel Bell is identified as a possible recipient of an enormous bribe as recently as 2006, the two senior federal officials said. It is unclear whether the bribe was actually offered or paid.

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