Why capitalization is important
Here’s a little tidbit from CNN that illustrates the importance of proper capitalization — or maybe it illustrates why political reporters should stay away from writing on national security: John McCain is launching a new line of attack against Barack Obama, criticizing his rival for saying Sunday that he would buck his own party by ...
Here's a little tidbit from CNN that illustrates the importance of proper capitalization -- or maybe it illustrates why political reporters should stay away from writing on national security:
Here’s a little tidbit from CNN that illustrates the importance of proper capitalization — or maybe it illustrates why political reporters should stay away from writing on national security:
John McCain is launching a new line of attack against Barack Obama, criticizing his rival for saying Sunday that he would buck his own party by calling for an increase in the size of the U.S. military.
"Of course, now he wants to increase it," McCain told an audience in Lee’s Summit, Missouri Monday. "But during the primary he told a liberal advocacy group that he’d cut defense spending by tens of billions of dollars. He promised them he would, quote, ‘slow our development of future combat systems.’"
See, Obama was most likely referring to Future Combat Systems (FCS), the controversial, $200 billion Pentagon procurement program, rather than "future combat systems" as a generic concept.
And by the way, it’s not actually some kind of commie, terrorist-loving, left-wing position to favor slowing FCS. As the Washington Post reported last year, lots of folks — including the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office — "have questioned the cost and management" of the program. Danger Room‘s Noah Shachtman has been following this story for awhile now, and he blasted the program thusly in March:
The Army’s gargantuan digital modernization plan has turned so rotten, a new congressional report says it’s time to start thinking about killing off the effort, and looking for new alternatives. […] The project is so big, the GAO now says that "it is not yet clear if or when the information network that is at the heart of the FCS concept can be developed, built, and demonstrated by the Army."
UPDATE: See also Sharon Weinberger’s recent argument for FP, "The Pentagon’s Doomsday Men," for the bigger picture when it comes to defense procurement.
UPDATE2: It gets better, Shachtman reminds us. McCain himself has "lashed out at the Army" — and rightly so — for overspending and some shady accounting maneuvers on FCS. "Hopefully, today’s remarks were just the result of some sloppy staff work," says Shachtman, "and not some change of heart about the program, or a cynical election-year misrepresentation."
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