Defense Procurement

Quotations

Media and Government

"Military commentators on most U.S. corporate broadcasting networks are mostly propagandists. On the whole, ex-U.S. military personnel with contacts with the administration and Pentagon who serve as broadcasting commentators are largely uncritical and parrot current U.S. military policy and the Pentagon spin of the day. In order to keep their lines of communication to the administration or Pentagon open, they need to transmit the official line of the moment. Most television commentators tend to uncritically support and legitimize U.S. military actions." (Kellner 2008)

"Analysis of news reports and advertisements suggests that popular culture and mass media depictions of fear, patriotism, consumption, and victimization contributed to the emergence of a national identity and collective action that transformed the meaning of terrorism from a strategy to a condition: terrorism world. Initial declarations about recovery and retaliation to promote patriotism became a “war on terrorism” with no end in sight. In this process, global policing that would justify a “first strike” against sovereign governments was socially constructed as commensurate with personal caring and national identity. These findings are organized around three points: (1) fear supported consumption as a meaningful way for audiences to sustain an identity of substance and character; (2) consumption and giving were joined symbolically as government and business propaganda emphasized common themes of spending and buying to help the country get back on track; (3) the absence of a clear target for reprisals contributed to the construction of broad symbolic enemies and goals." (Altheide 2004)

"The mass media play an integral part in the support of war. The mass media did not start the war with Iraq, but they shaped the context, the audience expectations, the discourse, and the production of symbolic meanings. We live in a postjournalism era, when there is no longer separation between event makers, event promoters, and event chroniclers. All rely on media logic and the sense about what will look good to relevant audiences, how to promote appropriate meanings, and above all, how to market and sell it all as something desirable. We have seen that War Programming is now a package; propaganda is joined to the news process when journalists and news sources operate with media logic, share in the construction and emotional performance of events, and limit the public forums for discussion, especially dissent." (Altheide 2005, footnotes omitted).

Government and Defense Contractors

"The results once again confirm the powerful effects of ideology on defense voting but also indicate that PAC contributions exert a statistically significant (though marginal) impact even when ideological predisposition is controlled. In addition, the results support the argument that those members with weaker ideological predispositions are more responsive to the effects of PAC money. Finally, the results indicate that, even at the margins, PAC contributions from defense contractors can influence the outcome of legislative deliberations, especially when the vote margin is not very large." (Fleisher 1993) "Unranked contractors are penalized heavily for procurement frauds, experiencing both a decline in market value and a subsequent loss in government-derived revenues; Influential contractors, in contrast, are penalized lightly, experiencing negligible changes in share value and government contract revenue." (Karpoff 1999).

"A longtime rule forbade retired military officers from lobbying the Pentagon on behalf of a private contractor for two years. That rule was repealed in 1996 because it singled out retired military officers while civilian Pentagon employees had to wait only a year." (Merle 2004)

"Growing privatization in the US, intense competition and the weakening of rules governing the relationship between contractors and the government have contributed to the “revolving door” phenomenon, which consists of the movement of former federal officials to the private sector, and through their connections and inside knowledge, exerting political influence over the government decision-making process as lobbyists, consultants and board members on behalf of the contractors for whom they work. The revolving door also involves the naming of executives from government contractors to senior positions within the state administration. Spurred by the move to streamline government and involve industry in procurement decisions, contractors and government have developed a symbiotic relationship in the US that is reflected in the fluid movement of key individuals between government and industry. Both Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney – when he held this job before becoming CEO of Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root – have tried their utmost to privatize the American military. For Rumsfeld, following corporate strategy, downsizing means moving to “just in time” hiring, using private firms to provide what the military formerly did for itself. He has insisted that it makes no sense to keep and pay for a well-trained standing army, when the US can purchase every sort of service on an “open market” whenever there is a need for military action. Cheney and other proponents of outsourcing ask why should soldiers cook for themselves, move their trash, provide supplies, run and maintain their technology – why not privatize these activities and free the military to concentrate on core tasks only? Even in the case of actual military duty – guarding public officials from hostile attack, fighting terrorist and guerrilla assaults – much of what soldiers traditionally do can be performed by PMCs. All of these services can be hired only when needed, and the army can be kept small, and hence inexpensive in terms of manpower. Thus, on taking office, Cheney named executives from leading military contractors as heads of the three services. James Roche, the secretary of the Air Force, is a former vice president of Northrop Grumman; Gordon England, the secretary of the Navy, is a former executive at General Dynamics; and Thomas P. White, a former secretary of the Army, came from Enron.325 A recent study of defense contracting in the US identified 224 high-ranking government officials over the past seven years who moved into the private sector to work as lobbyists, board members or executives of contractors. Moreover, at least one-third of these former high-ranking former government employees had held positions that allowed them to influence government contracting decisions. A survey of the revolving door phenomenon concluded that “the revolving door has become such an accepted part of federal contracting in recent years that it is frequently difficult to determine where the government stops and the private sector begins.” (Schreier 2005, pg. 90. footnotes omitted).

Defense Contractors and Media

"Much of today’s infrastructure for communications and information resulted from spin-offs of spending on military technology... Similar government involvement led to the creation of the Internet by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (now ARPA)." (Lehman 1996 at 11)

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