Yesterday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta brought his song and dance show to Congress. He was invited to speak by Congressional Republicans about routine defense subjects, but it quickly turned into a well thought out media ploy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pVgvfnzwFPI

The law that created the deficit committee also created a zero-sum game: Any expensive program that escapes the budget knife does so at the expense of cuts to other programs. If the military contractors succeed in keeping the war budget intact, they’ll likely do so at the expense of Social Security and Medicare.

Well, that didn’t take very long.

Two days ago, while representatives of war profiteers were on the Hill trying to push elected officials to protect their profit margins from the deficit committee, heads of the war industry met in a closed-door meeting with Defense Secretary Panetta. The next day, the war contractors held a press conference to try to spin away the fact that military spending costs jobs compared to other ways of spending the money. And today, Panetta and his subordinates came out swinging with the same bogus spin on “jobs.” Panetta says that cuts to the Pentagon budget that would be triggered if the deficit committee doesn’t produce a plan that passes Congress could cause the jobless rate to jump 1 percent.

As the war industry’s opening blitz to influence the deficit committee draws to an end, I just wanted to leave our readers with a parting thought. Below is an infographic I created using data drawn from the hawkiest of the hawks–Foreign Policy Initiative (formerly known/reviled as the Project for a New American Century). This shows just how ridiculous the Pentagon’s and the war profiteers’ fear-mongering about “doomsday” budgets really is.

On Tuesday, the military contractors behind the “Second To None” campaign pleaded “no comment” to our War Costs campaign’s full-page Politico ad exposing the economic damage caused by massive war budgets. The same day, they announced a press conference and the upcoming launch of a national campaign to scare people about job losses if we cut the war budget. It seems like they had a comment or two after all. But as these companies gather at the National Press Club on Wednesday morning to frighten you into funding their trust funds, remember: military spending costs us jobs compared to other ways of spending the money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8q2Xc0VgK4&feature=player_embedded

The new deficit commission will hold its first substantive meeting on Tuesday, and the military contractors will be out in force to protect their profits. They’ll be working to cash in on hundreds millions of dollars in campaign donations and lobbying spending, and they’ll deploy their favorite (and bogus) “jobs” spin. But members of the committee should not be fooled. The war industry is interested in one thing: continuing profits at our expense.