[Newspoetry] PostWar Pentagon hosts Garage and Fire Sale

[Donald L Emerick]

Pentagon Reports Raising $1.7 Billion to Assist Relief Effort
By THOM SHANKER
The Defense Department said about $1.7 billion in financial assistance,
food, medicine and other relief products had been raised from various countries.

DoD hosted its first ever post-Iraq-War garage sale last weekend.  Procurement
Chief Rear Admiral Nelson N. Nelson ("the 'N' stands for 'Nelson'," Nelson said)
said that excess inventory had long been clogging the entrance to Pentagon
garages, making it difficult to park the limousines of senior military officers
and their cadres of aides-de-camps, secretaries (and in some cases, wives),
security guards, flattering admirers (or embedded journalists of the free press)
and general household retainers (picked up cheaply when "serving" overseas
(and overland, sometimes) in foreign countries and in other classified places).

"We thought the recent war would last long enough to use up some of this
mind-boggling equipment and supplies, but the truth is that the War did not
even make a dent in this mess.  And, what with Congress salivating to spend
hundreds of billions of money on new weapons of all kinds -- no new gadgetry
is ever too dumb to buy.  Congress wants to buy shiny new tanks and planes,
to show off to the neighbors, so they dare not dream of keeping up with us,
because we are a neighbor's worst nightmare -- we are richer than the Joneses."


"But, new procurements do present us with some difficult storage problems.
Where do you put all of the old stuff?  Just how many moth-balls does it take?
Who keeps the original packing cartons and their foam packing materials?
Besides that, we all know that you never can buy new parts for old tanks and
planes: they just never have those things in inventory when something breaks.
Let's say that no weapon system is beyond the scope of being a part of our
disposable waste society.  When something breaks on a billion dollar ship,
tank, or plane, why it is just better procurement to go out and buy a whole
new one!  (Besides, I rack up a lot of free frequent flier for the family this way.)"

"And, why don't we just build more garages?  Well, we've tried that, but,
even with five sides to it, and a huge basement, everyone wants to park
close to the door to their office here in the Pentagon.  Shuttles from
remote garages and parking lots have no appeal to brass and flag officers.
Besides, who could fit their entire entourage onto a single shuttle bus?"

"You should have seen the 'surplus' buyers when they mobbed in here last
weekend!  Then you would have seen clearly what promotes DEMOCRACY
everywhere in the world!  Why, those buyers haggled over prices, terms
and conditions of contracts like those guys in the Big Board pit in Chicago.
talk about a futures market!  Why, the true amount of hard good inventory
we liquidated would have cost $100Bn, retail new, but we got over $1.7Bn
for it, with no problem.  Moreover, we set up easy loan credits for any buyer,
so that foreign "aid" money was no limitation, even for the smallest nation.
And, with each item purchased, we promised a slew of private contractor
specialists, free on board, who will help the foreign buyers fit the weapons
into their diverse national military security programs."

"DEMOCRACY, yes, indeed, and FREEDOM!  Those are the watchwords
of procurement.  You can't buy happiness, but you can buy SECURITY!"

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
Newspoet-at-large
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