As CQ's Josh Rogin reports, Team Obama wants an eight percent, $40 billion increase in the Defense Department budget -- from $487.7 billion in 2009 to $527.7 billion in 2010. But this uptick is only about half the size as the one the Joint Chiefs originally requested, in a $584 billion draft budget, complied last fall. So cue the all-too-predictable cries of Obama-as-hippie. "When it comes to the budget it appears that the choices Obama is making are all too reflective of a man who not long ago had the most liberal voting record in the Senate," sniffs Max Boot.
[From $40 Billion Increase Billed as Pentagon Budget 'Cut' (Updated) | Danger Room from Wired.com]
Oh, please. The $527 billion figure is "what the Bush people thought was the right number last February and that’s the number we’re going with," an Office of Management and Budget official tells Rogin. "The Joint Chiefs did that to lay down a marker for the incoming administration that was unrealistic. It’s more of a wish list than anything else."
Did you ever see that Das Boot movie, by the way? I saw it in a movie theater in Hinsdale, Illinois, with a sound system so spectacularly awful it made watching foreign movies with sub-titles a special joy, but even without that edge it was a heckuva flick. If sub-titles are not your thing, I think they later made an English version with the prosaic title, The Boat, but it's better seen in German because, you know, it's about Germans and whatever.
Max Boot is Das's brother, which is what got me thinking about Das Boot.
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