Uneasy Rhetoric

In a recent post on Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin talks about the fact that the military is using blimps to help pinpoint targets on the ground. Apparently, these aerostats, “worked so well at detecting and identifying enemy forces and objects that Defense Department officials want to buy more of them” (from a Federal Computer Week article).

I say terrific. Anything that works to keep our troops out of harm’s way is okay by me. What interests me, though, is what the Defense Department official said about the aerostat system: “We wouldn’t have gotten the funding if it wasn’t successful.”

If only that were true. One needs only look at the Missile Defense System to know that the Military gets the toys it wants, whether they work.