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If you haven't been following Washington's agonizing debate over the defense budget, let us summarize it for you: Cutting the Pentagon's allowance will kill your grandmother. Maybe the family dog, too. But definitely granny.
It's one thing to brace for the pain of cuts that will probably slice $450 billion over 10 years from the defense budget. But it's quite another to pretend, for the sake of leverage in Congress or to stroke a political or military constituency, that those cuts will open America's ramparts to the barbarians. After all, even the hugest cuts imaginable will mean the U.S. spends $4 trillion on the military over 10 years instead of $5 trillion.
Yet day in and day out, new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, members of Congress, think-tank wonks and journalists offer up steaming piles of hysteria over the defense budget. News flash: The Pentagon's nightmare scenario of cuts north of $800 billion over a decade ain't gonna happen. But since the hysteria is only going to increase over the next week, as a "Super-Committee" of legislators wheezes to meet its Nov. 23 deadline for cutting the federal budget, it's time to compile a list of the most lunatic, paranoid, factually challenged, intelligence-insulting predictions on offer about the dire impact of defense cuts. Do it for grandma.
