Oh, and keep in mind that more than two-thirds of the IC’s intelligence programs are controlled by the Pentagon, which also means control over a major chunk of the combined intelligence budget, announced at $75 billion (“2 1/2 times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001,” according to Priest and Arkin), but undoubtedly far larger.
And when it comes to the Pentagon, that’s just a start. Massive expansion in all directions has been its m.o. since 9/11. Its soaring budget hit about $700 billion for fiscal year 2010 (when you include a war-fighting supplemental bill of $33 billion) -- an increase of only 4.7% in otherwise budget-slashing times -- and is now projected to hit $726 billion in fiscal year 2011. Some experts claim, however, that the real figure may come closer to the trillion-dollar mark when all aspects of national security are factored in. Not surprisingly, it has taken over a spectrum of State Department-controlled civilian activities, ranging from humanitarian relief and development (aka “nation-building”) to actual diplomacy. And don’t forget its growing roles as a domestic-disaster manager and a global arms dealer, or even as a Green Revolution energy innovator. You could certainly think of the Pentagon as the Blob on the American horizon, and yet, looking around, you might hardly be aware of the ways your country continues to be militarized.
With that in mind, let’s consider another warscape, one particularly appropriate to a moment when numerous commentators are pointing out that the U.S. seems to be morphing from a can-do into a can’t-do nation, when the headlines are filled with exploding gas lines and grim reports on the country’s aging infrastructure, when a major commuter tunnel from New Jersey to Manhattan, the sort of project that once would have been tattoo-ably American, has just been canceled by New Jersey’s governor.
