Interesting.

The "swords into plowshares" rhetoric is common every election. Then the candidate finds out that s/he can't deliver.

The irony is that most defense spending generates even more non-defense utilization of the technologies, and the circle-of-money is what keeps this economy afloat. It's proven to be better economic seed money than all the $300/$600 checks the Treasury can mail.

There are very few technologies in use today (including the Internet - sorry, Mr. Gore) that can't trace their roots back to a Department of Defense initiative. Even the use of nuclear energy to provide electricity began with defense applications to harness the giant at an affordable and controllable manner.

Both candidates will be making statements geared towards particular special interest groups, and the words will be what each group du jour wants to hear, even if the slightest amount of common sense knocks the socks off the message. This is just one of the examples.