From the Arizona Republic, December 11, 2010, page A6, John Milburn of the Associated Press:

For nearly two years, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his aides searched for the right words to describe at the end of his presidency his fear that the nations burgeoning miliary power was driving its foreign policy, newly released papers show.

The papers show that Eisenhower and his staff spent two years preparing his final speech to the nation. One document features a typewritten note from the president, lamenting that when he joined the military in 1911, there were 84,000 Army soldiers, a number that ballooned roughly tenfold by 1960.

“The direct result of this continued high level of defense expenditures has been to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions, where none had existed before” he had written in a draft section of his final speech.

The speech was delivered on January 17, 1961.

Born in 1890, Ike died in 1969. He grew up in Kansas and graduated from West Point, commanding Allied forces in Europe, including the D-Day invasion of France.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library on Friday, December 10, 2010, unveiled these previously undisclosed documents.

Ike was an interesting fellow. Maybe a true American hero. The military-industrial complex related deficits are now hurting our economic recovery.

I am NOT anti-military. I am just being reflective…as was Ike.