Of Politics and the Pentagon

I just read Wired's article about how Robert Gates is trying to correct the misdirection of operations in the Pentagon. I never realized the situation was so bad.

The military needs to fight today's battles, not tomorrow's. Generals are always fighting the last war, the old saying goes, but in reality the Department of Defense has the opposite problem. While a relative handful of troops fight and die "downrange" in war zones, a massive bureaucracy develops strategies, spends money, and—most especially—builds weapons, all in the name of theoretical, decades-hence showdowns. It's a $500 billion perpetual motion machine.