Monday (January 17) is the 50th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned of the rise of a “military-industrial complex.”
Martin Luther King Day is also Monday. He said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
On Tuesday, the LA Times reported, Vice President Biden “backed away from his own recent promise that the U.S. would pull out of the country ‘come hell or high water’ by 2014.” Instead “conceding that the U.S. might retain a presence in Afghanistan when the 2014 deadline hits and beyond.”

JO COMERFORD, CHRIS HELLMAN
Comerford is executive director of the National Priorities Project; Hellman is budget analyst for the group, which as part of the re-launch of its website, CostofWar.com, has just issued “What’s at Stake?” — 50 state-level briefs focused on the impact of war spending. [Read more...]