Not Ike's Military Industrial Complex

So says one of the authors of "Top Secret America," The Washington Post series about the sprawling defense apparatus that has mushroomed since 9/11.

Kafka could have only dreamed of such bureaucratic inefficiency. Of course, that's absolutely false: he wrote about it. (Actually, just re-reading The Castle; a translation put out in the past decade that is much closer to what he left behind than what was originally published, and finished, after his death by his friend.)

[Lovin' that -do.]

Finally, perhaps, the always-expanding defense complex, which includes the military and all the intelligence agencies, will become part of the deficit debate. It will be interesting to see how the deficit-hawks, typically some of the strongest supporters of defense spending (of course, this crosses the aisle), will react to this indictment of the community, which includes the Congressional role of funding of the whole thing.

This was the thread picked up most by the former head of the 9/11 Commission that recommended the creation of the DNI position, the ostensible head of this ungainly beast, in the first place. On PBS News Hour, he said that no matter how well coordinated the agencies are, redundancies and inefficiencies will remain, if the funding process in Congress remains fragmented. Uh, great.