On Pentagon Waste: Just Give It to Us Straight

Anna, your article is right on but barely touches the root causes of the waste and what can be done to correct it. I have been employed in the business for over 25 years and plan to write a book about it. People are talking about ear marks and pork barrel projects but the magician diverts us from the same going on regarding defense department pork. Congress needs to expose it all. I offered to testify about my first hand experince with DoD waste and if they will be serious about exposing the root causes of the waste and see real examples and what can be done to clean it up. For example: The last two commanding generals (Malashenko and Scott) of the Defense Contracting Management Agency retired and went to work for Boeing and Lockheed. Thousands of retired military program managers and acquisition military officers have retired taking off their military suits and are now employeed in business suits working for defense contractors, consultants and defense program offices, DCMA, etc., as civilians now and all collecting military retirement salaries and along with their new six figure salaries. The defense department makes more power point slides than buying actual hardware nowadays. The pentagon has more contracts for "support contractor SMEs and lead systems integrators" than they do for buying actual hardware. The military industry complex is the right wing jobs programs complex more than a lean competitive industry.

michael johnson of FL 1:49PM March 06, 2009