It is true that programs are going to be hunting for dollars. And it is true there are more programs than dollars. But the civilian leaders are doing nothing to bring the budget in line. Even though we are hearing a lot of rhetoric from the office of the Defense secretary, we see they are going along with what the services want. It shows who is running the Pentagon.

The request might be as high as $100 billion, but that'll be over a two-year split.

That the DOD appropriations legislation has been stuck at this 2.3 percent suggests a conscious, not a random, pattern. Could it be that the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have settled on a fixed percentage for their pork?

The ones that pop up at the last minute at conference are rare.

Earmarks undergo virtually no review, making it impossible to distinguish between truly meritorious projects and those that are pure pork.

There are all kinds of ways to address it, but it's hard to eliminate. The problem is fundamental to the nature of the insurgency.

There is a big chasm between rhetoric and the budget process.

We don't know if the operational tempo is going to go up, down, or stay the same. We don't know what the number will be or what the direction of the trend will be.

When it comes to budget decisions that would help us fight the long war, they either change nothing or walk in the wrong direction.

He has to convince me about this every time it comes up.