Reply #76: You don't think those guys did not ask for that stuff when they submitted [View All]

their annual budgets? Of COURSE they did. When it got up to the damn E Ring, Rummy stood up at his little architect's desk (he works standing up, in hiking boots, I shit you not) and redlined a whole load of high-cost items. Why? Because he knew how much he could get away with when submitting the appropriation...and then, once it gets to the Congress and they do the mark-up, even more stuff gets redlined. And of course, if you give the troops what they need, there's less for the Halliburton/KBR types....no graft for the war profiteers. But you cannot blame that on the military, that's what the civilian overseers laid on them.

You basically know, when you are crunching your numbers, to ask for twenty five percent more stuff than you figure you are gonna get. If it's a good year, you'll get enough cash and stuff to keep going, if it is a great year, you'll get five percent more than you counted on, and if it is a bad year, you are scrounging in garbage heaps for metal to weld on to your crappy Humvee....