Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morell confirmed to Fox’s Megyn Kelly today what many of us suspected. That the US has the capability to shut down WikiLeaks, but has chosen not to.

Here’s what he told Megyn:

At the end of the day, as you heard from the Secretary of Defense yesterday, Megyn, this creates some awkward and embarrassing situations for the United States government, it clearly puts those who cooperate with us, even some of our diplomats, in difficult positions (hopefully not endangered situations). But, at the end of the day, it does not, at least over the long term, adversely impact America’s power or prestige. Secretary Gates just does not buy into that. People don’t do business with America necessarily because they like us or even trust us. They do business with us because they must. We are the last, one, remaining, indispensable power.

What a bunch of crap. First off, never trust a man who spells Jeff with a G.  Secondly, this is all smoke and mirrors. What’s really at play here is team Obama’s hard left ideology. They admire people like Julian Assange. He’s a hero to them. The left idolizes Daniel Ellsberg to this very day for leaking The Pentagon Papers. Obama won’t shut down WikiLeaks because secretly he wants them to keep doing what they’re doing.

We now have a President of The United States who cares more about pleasing his radical left wing kook base than our national security.

Secretary of Defense Gates is finally ready to announce his plans for the defense budget to president Obama and it’s sure to ruffle feathers on both sides of the aisle.

Among other things, Gates will recommend a halt to production of the F-22 fighter jet at 187 aircraft. Meanwhile he wants to speed-up production of the F-35 fighter jet which will eventually total 2,443 aircraft at a total price tag of around 1 trillion dollars.

I’m usually suspect of democrat administrations trying to cut military budgets, but I trust Gates to do the right thing. I think it’s an outrage that contractors like Boeing have gotten away with stealing the government blind with absurd cost overruns. The Pentagon has been in dire need of a revised procurement process for getting new weapon systems.

I agree with Gates that too many top brass at DOD are still stuck in a cold war mentality. We don’t need a shit load of new battle tanks or other conventional land based war machines.

Conventional warfare involving tank battles with uniformed armies are largely a thing of the past. We must always be prepared for that just in case, but we need to look forward and equip ourselves to better fight unconventional guerrilla conflicts.

Low Intensity conflicts in the Middle East and Africa is what the U.S. will be involved with for at least the next couple of decades.

It’s absolutely critical that America maintains military superiority over the rest of the world and whatever it costs to do that we should spend. However, there is no reason to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons we don’t need, weapons that don’t work, and weapons that cost 5x what contractors promised they would.