How The Pentagon Really Gets Funded

"The most interesting parts of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s memoir, Duty, are about how he navigated the Department of Defense (DoD) bureaucracy and the special interests who live off it. A recurring theme is the difficulty Gates had in getting the DoD to provide the services it is expected to provide in a timely and efficient manner. Over and over again, he was stymied by various interested groups — inside and outside of the department — whose overriding concern was to protect the status quo."