Swampwater 0
Return of the Swamp Thang:
The underlying issue is that, after years of “privatizing” military functions, such as policing, quartermastering (?), and the like, the military does not have enough people to do what needs to be done. This produced an appearance of restraint in defense spending, but no savings, as mercenaries, who are loyal to whoever signs their paycheck, took up the slack.
It was also a great strategy for hiding the actual costs of military operations, since expenditures for the mercenaries are hidden in various line items in the budgets for numerous departments, including State and the CIA, while shoveling money out the back door into the swamp, as it were, and saving nothing.
This is another example of bad (Republican) policy leading to disastrous results, with which we are now stuck.
