Gates Criticizes Rumsfeld's Pentagon

Apparently, a massive supercomputer designed to nuke Mars may have been a waste of taxpayer dollars

The Secretary of Defense took a potshot at wasteful spending at the Pentagon in the early years and how our military-industrial structure was too focused on buying wizbang gizmos for a war with China that is never going to happen. From WaPo:

The military's struggle to adjust to the counterinsurgency mission in Iraq "came at a frightful human, financial and political cost," Gates told an audience of military officers at the National Defense University here. "For every heroic and resourceful innovation by troops and commanders on the battlefield, there was some institutional shortcoming at the Pentagon that they had to overcome," he said.

While having a military skilled in fighting major conventional ground wars is essential, Gates said, such a war is unlikely in the near future. Yet the Pentagon has placed comparatively too much emphasis on developing high-technology weapon systems aimed at potential state adversaries such as China or Russia that take years to develop, he said, noting that the 2009 budget contains more than $180 billion for such conventional systems.

Brandon Friedman has a mancrush on our current SECDEF, and frankly, I do too. Primarily because he's not a political hack, and also he took the position at a time when he was jumping into a big shit sandwich.