Following up on a tip by the indispensable Minnesota Mom, the next book on my reading list is The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich.  If this excerpt from the preface is any guide, it should be on yours, too:

Today, I still situate myself culturally on the right.  And I continue to view the remedies proffered by mainstream liberalism with skepticism.  But my disenchantment with what passes for mainstream conservatism, embodied in the present Bush administration and its groupies, is just about absolute.  Fiscal irresponsibility, a buccaneering foreign policy, a disregard for the Constitution, the barest lip service as a response to profound moral controversies: these do not qualify as authentically conservative values.

Gordon Adams, a long-time friend from the federal budgeting world, is one of this country's true experts on military spending and budgeting so when he talks, I listen.

One of Gordon's latest articles is a must-read given some of the ridiculousness passing for serious debate these days about Pentagon spending.  It's short and well worth your time.

You're reading the headline correctly. One very senior and presumably highly influential person at the Pentagon -- Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, wants annual U.S. defense spending to increase by about 1 percent of GNP, or roughly $130 billion, a year.

The evidence continues to mount: Blackwater, that is, the reliance on contractors to do what should be done by the military, is the direct result of the Pentagon’s, or White House’s disastrous federal budget policies.

Higher mlitary spending or more Blackwaters are on the way. That's the inevitable conclusion from today's "Budget Battles" on nationaljournal.com.

Here's the key point: the increased use of expensive contractors was inevitable given the federal budget politics that encouraged the White House and Capitol Hill to underestimate the military threat to the United States and the forces needed to deal with it so that  lower costs could be projected.

I've gotten more questions the past two weeks from folks on Wall Street about where the Pentagon budget is heading than I've gotten the whole rest of the year. The questions are not about what is happening now or will happen next year, but about military spending starting in 2009.

My answer almost always suprises the callers: Regardless of who is elected president and which party controls Congress, and even if all activities in Iraq and Afghanistan cease, it is very unlikely there will be a large drop in military spending.