concerned members to take up the cause of real reform.

Perhaps the defense mega-corporations and the congressional bacon mongers, through their excesses, have spawned their own worst nightmare: well-informed, selfless opponents determined to act and supported by a disgusted public.

If so, there are many hard, brutish fights ahead.  Corrupted power never surrenders easily.  The first such fight is won.  Among the list of 58 senators who fought and won against business as usual there may just be some real leaders ready to stand up for curing the rot in our country's defenses.

Patriotic Americans have been waiting too long.

This article was co-written with Pierre M. Sprey.  Mr. Sprey, together with Air Force Cols John Boyd and Everest Riccioni, brought to fruition the F-16; he also led the design team for the A-10 and helped implement the program.  He is one of a very small number of Pentagon insiders who started the military reform movement in the late 1960s.  Both Wheeler and Sprey are contributors to the new anthology "America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress."