Aboard S/V ChaliVentures, lying Finike, Turkey — Here we have another stellar example of the New York Times' uncritical reportage on national defense. Such stories help sustain a failing status quo by appealing to establishment apparatchiks of an earlier era who are probably trying to worm their way back into the game, perhaps in an Obama Administration.

Cries about defense brain drain and calls for better systems management have been heard since at least the 1960s, yet Kaminski and others interviewed by the New York Times talk about loss of expertise and the Pentagon's grotesque acquisition management problems as if they are recent developments. Looking back, did not the F-111 and C-5 cost overrun scandals occur in the 1960s, even though both programs were sold at that time as examples of better systems management, and in just the same way that in the early 1990s Mr. Kaminski and his cohorts sold the problem plagued, cost overrun infected $200+ billion Joint Strike Fighter program to the President and Congress? All that is new in 2008 is that Pentagon excess occurs without a superpower adversary that would justify bloated budgets, an adversary comparable to the Soviet Union... yet the Pentagon still spends more than the rest of the world's military spending combined.