http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/where-does-milllons-pentagon-contracts-go
A billion dollars from the federal government: that kind of money could go a long way toward revitalizing a country's aging infrastructure. It could provide housing or better water and sewer systems. It could enhance a transportation network or develop an urban waterfront. It could provide local jobs. It could do any or all of these things. And, in fact, it did. It just happened to be in the Middle East, not the United States.
The Pentagon awarded $667.2 million in contracts in 2012, and more than $1 billion during Barack Obama's first term in office forconstruction projects in largely autocratic Middle Eastern nations, according to figures provided to TomDispatch by the US Army Corps of Engineers Middle East District (USACE-MED). More than $178 million in similar funding is already anticipated for 2013. These contracts represent a mix of projects, including expanding and upgrading military bases used by US troops in the region, building facilities for indigenous security forces, and launching infrastructure projects meant to improve the lives of local populations.
The figures are telling, but far from complete. They do not, for example, cover any of the billionsspent on work at the more than 1,000 US and coalition bases, outposts, and other facilities in Afghanistan or the thousands more manned by local forces.They also leave out construction projects undertaken in the region by other military services like the US Air Force, as well as money spent at an unspecified number of bases in the Middle East that the Corps of Engineers "has no involvement with," according to Joan Kibler, chief of the Middle East District's public affairs office.
let's get something straight they like referring to expenditures happenig "under Obama's term, well for a change let's direct that buck to where it starts "CONGRESS" they sign the ok on the bills they have congressional appropriation committees, they hold the purse strings not the Pres. now and under Bush terms.
In the final days of the presidential campaign, President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that it was time to reap a peace dividend as America's wars wind down. Nation-building here at home should, he insisted, be put on the agenda: "What we can now do is free up some resources, to, for example, put Americans back to work, especially our veterans, rebuilding our roads, our bridges."
Setting aside just how slipshod or even downright disastrous Washington's last decade of nation-building projectsin Iraq and Afghanistan have been, the president's proposal to rebuild roads, upgrade bridges, and retrofit the country'selectrical grid sounds eminently sensible. After all, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives America's infrastructure a grade of "D." If, in the era of the $800 billion stimulus package, $1 billion at first sounds paltry, ask the mayors of Detroit, Belmar, New Jersey, or even New York City what that money would mean to their municipalities. America may need $2.2 trillion in repairs and maintenance according to ASCE, but $1 billion could radically change the fortunes of many a city.
Instead, that money is flowing into the oil-rich Middle East. Unknown to most Americans, thousands of State Department personnel, military advisors, and hired contractors remain at several large civilian bases in Iraq where nation-building projects are ongoing; hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been flowing into military construction projects in repressive Persian Gulf states like Bahrain and Qatar; and the Pentagon is expanding its construction program in Central Asia. All of this adds up to a multifaceted project that seems at odds with the president's rhetoric. (The White House did not respond to TomDispatch's repeated requests for comment.)
these are thereasons they don't want to touch military spending they don't care whether the troops have armored vest that work. it's about keeping the bucks flowinf in the complex profiters business and private contractors not the military. warehouse abound with new weapons and planes that the pentagon says they don't need, but republicans scare tactics claiming Pres. is letting us fallbehind other countries militarily, and we get all upset that we can't spend billions more for something we don't need.
