-Caveat Lector-
href="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_dougherty/2923 _xnjdo_nondefense.shtml"http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_ dougherty/2923_xnjdo_nondefense.shtml
Non-defense items clog Defense budget: Breast cancer research, marijuana eradication, lack college aid, Native American health care By Jon E. Dougherty © 2000 WorldNetDaily.com
An "incestuous relationship" between the administration and civilians appointed to "key positions throughout the Pentagon" has enabled the Clinton-Gore White House to quietly shift hundreds of millions of dollars of the defense budget to fund favorite non-military social, health and research programs -- one of the biggest such line items being $175 million for breast-cancer research -- according to a high-ranking Pentagon official.
In fact, for the last seven years, the administration has altered the Defense Department's budget in such a way as to increase non-defense-related spending, while giving the appearance that the overall defense budget has not decreased, say defense analysts. "The Pentagon's key positions are filled with former Democratic staffers from Capitol Hill," said a key Pentagon official who asked not to be identified in this report, noting that Defense Secretary William Cohen, a former Republican senator, is "just a figurehead who has no idea what's going on" inside the department.
Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies for the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, agrees, and takes the point a step further. In addition to major non-military items in the defense budget, the Pentagon -- through political patronage -- is also filled with defense-related items that service branches don't want and that the Department of Defense doesn't need, says Eland. Often, he adds, those items are bought while other more pressing line items go unfunded or under-funded.
"Besides the now-famous breast cancer funding everyone always brings up, there are other items -- C-130s, F-15s, and amphibious ships -- that the Pentagon doesn't want, but that lawmakers add into the budget anyway," Eland says.
Has such spending increased or decreased over the last decade?
"It definitely has increased," says Eland. "People try to relate these items to national security ... because they're much more likely to get funding for them," but in reality, he said, they contribute little to overall military readiness.
"There are pockets of non-readiness throughout the military," Eland said, because much of the Pentagon's budget has gone towards unnecessary weapons systems and non-military defense items.
Because the Defense Department's budget has remained fairly constant for the past several years, it "might appear as though we're spending just as much on the military as ever before," said the Pentagon source.
Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore has made such contentions, maintaining that the Pentagon's budget has gone towards alleviating manpower, equipment and spare parts shortages. Defense Department and Senate Armed Services Committee reports, however, refute those claims.
"Although U.S. military forces remain fundamentally sound and capable, aging equipment, spare parts shortfalls, manning and experience gaps continue to manifest themselves in terms of declining mission capable rates and decreasing readiness ratings in some units," says the Senate Armed Services Committee's markup summary for the National Defense Authorization Bill of 2001.
"The pace of contingency operations continues to stress the readiness of certain segments of the force," adds the Department of Defense Quarterly Readiness Report to Congress, measuring the October-December 1999 timeframe.
"Most troubling are indications that problems are emerging in the readiness of forward deployed and first-to-fight units," the Senate markup summary report says, noting that the Armed Services Committee added $1.5 billion to address "key readiness programs, including ammunition, spare parts, equipment maintenance and training funds."
Gore's claims were also disputed by the Defense official who spoke to WorldNetDaily, who noted that the extra non-defense expenditures were all contributing to the findings in congressional and defense-review reports. "One year, [former Colorado Democratic Rep.] Patsy Schroeder was padding all kinds of health research and development, as well as [other] health programs," making the Defense Department "the leading research agency for HIV."
Administration and Pentagon staffers can then say, "'We haven't decreased defense spending,'" the official said, "but they've changed what Defense does -- and now it researches HIV, for example."
In another case, such accounting schemes have led to a tripling of the Army's Science and Technology budget every year, which has allowed the administration to "truthfully claim that more is being spent on research and development," the official said. "It's just not
