Should military 'black budgeting' be legal?

[John Dibble]

Maybe not, but if they didn't do that they'd just say they are spending it on X when they are really spending it on Y.

[John Dibble]

Maybe not, but if they didn't do that they'd just say they are spending it on X when they are really spending it on Y.

Unless congress just decided that wasn't good enough and withdrew the funding.

Which would only happen if enough of Congress would pay attention and care long enough to put their pet pork projects and whatever the issue du jour the the proles are clamoring about aside to even notice which projects are just fronts to fund other projects. Even then at best you might expect is that they'd form a committee to investigate it, and then the matter would likely be forgotten shortly after.

[John Dibble]

I agree.  I'm sure it can be done without giving away any state secrets.

It could be, but people that hate the military would make sure we couldn't.

Quite simply: the State oughtn't be permitted to keep secrets from its populace.

I think that opinion is too broad.

Why's that? As I see it: if the State isn't doing anything that by rights ought to inflame its citizenry, then it ought to tell everything it's doing. And if it is doing something upsetting, then it shouldn't be doing it.

Well, if the state has to tell it's citizens everything it's doing, then it couldn't perform a secret military operation during wartime which could be essential to victory. It couldn't have spies in foreign countries either, because if who our spies are is not secret then they couldn't do their job. There are a variety of other conceivable scenarios in which there would be an interest in keeping a secret that would benefit the nation.

In an ideal world everything would be transparent, but unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world. (not that we couldn't use some more transparency from our current government)