Re: Anybody else listening to W?
jmonica, given the facts provided you could have found this yourself if you were genuinely interested.<br /><br />The military inherited by the Bush administration was not just the Clinton administration's legacy. A Republican Congress added some $75 billion in additional resources to the Clinton defense budgets between 1995-2000, funds that prevented the development of serious readiness problems within the U.S. military, especially given the deployment of U.S. forces overseas during the 1993-2000 period a total of 44 times. <br /><br /> In addition, there is a lag time during which the full impact of Clinton-era defense decisions would actually affect the deployed U.S. military. At a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference I spoke at in 2001, the center's president former Clinton era-defense official admitted that the procurement portion of the final Clinton five-year defense plan was under-funded by at least 40 percent, and if allowed to continue at the proposed funding level, would have resulted in a military unable to effectively deploy even in those areas where it is now engaged. Underfunded programs included the F-22, the C-17, missile defense, tankers, space assets, Navy shipbuilding and the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). <br /><br /> During the Clinton administration, massive numbers of ships, planes, tanks and people were eliminated from the armed services, far in excess of the proposed cuts promised by candidate Clinton during the 1992 campaign. In ''Putting People First,'' the then-serving governor of Arkansas proposed reducing the final defense budget of the Bush administration by some $60 billion over 5 years. At the time, with the end of the Cold War and the triumph of the West over the Soviet Union, such a reduction was not viewed with much alarm even within the defense department. However, it was widely assumed that the Clinton folks, if elected, might very well end up trashing the defense establishment to a far greater extent than the cuts promised in the 1992 campaign. <br /><br /> And indeed, in 1993-9, the Clinton administration cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from the previous administration's last proposed budget, including the addition of tens of billions in additional non-defense expenditures that further reduced funding available for necessary military projects. Some years later, Sen. Sam Nunn, the retiring ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, estimated that overall defense budget cuts from 1986 through 1996 totaled some $1 trillion, when compared to the funds required to maintain a steady-state military force. During the Clinton administration, the U.S. went on what many experts call a procurement holiday. The Joint Chiefs had frequently stated the need for an annual procurement budget of at least $60 billion, a requirement echoed by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown said DOD needed $50 billion in additional spending a year. However, in order to placate its anti-defense Hill allies, the Clinton administration proposed defense budgets that misrepresented procurements in the out-years. The actual funding being proposed would either be reduced in real terms or barely keep pace with inflation. <br /><br />Bush administration proposed an immediate supplemental for fiscal 2001, the year starting October 1, 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration, in order to begin the process of providing necessary and additional funds for the Defense Department. <br /><br /><br />U.S. Military Hits Lowest Readiness Levels in Years, Analyst Says<br /><br />WASHINGTON, Sept. 18, 2000Reeling from a combination of troop cuts, slashed budgets and overuse, the U.S. military is suffering from its lowest state of readiness since the end of the Cold War, a new Heritage Foundation study says. <br /><br />Between 1992 and 2000, the Clinton administration cut national defense by more than 500,000 personnel and $50 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, notes defense policy analyst Jack Spencer. A just-released Congressional Budget Office report finds that military funding would need to increase by $50 billion a year simply to maintain the size of todays forces.<br /><br />Since 1992, Spencer notes, the Army has lost four active divisions and two reserve divisions30 percent of its staff. The Air Force is down by five tactical squadrons, 178 bombers and 30 percent of its active personnel. The naval fleet has gone from 393 ships in 1992 to 316, and the Navy has decreased its active duty personnel by 30 percent. Even the Marines have lost personnel22,000 since 1992.<br /><br />Despite this drastic downsizing, the pace of military deployments has increased 16-fold over the last eight years, including missions in Somalia (1993), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1996), and Iraq and Kuwait (1998). As a result of this over-extension, all four servicesAir Force, Army, Marines and Navyface a shortage of modernized equipment and low morale that is driving more and more troops out of the military completely.<br /><br />"Nearly a decade of misdirected policy coupled with a myopic modernization strategy has rendered Americas armed forces years away from top form," writes Spencer, who notes that readiness refers to a units ability to accomplish its assigned mission. Logistics, available spare parts, training, equipment and morale all contribute to readiness, he says.<br /><br />Even those who deny a readiness problem cant claim the United States is prepared to fulfill its own "National Security Strategy," which states that the country must be able to fight and win two major regional conflicts during overlapping timeframes, Spencer says. Key senior military officersincluding Commandant of the Marines Corps Gen. James Jones, former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jay Johnson, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryanhave expressed serious concerns about the ability of their respective services to carry out this strategy.<br /><br />The services are also short of critical equipment, including night-vision goggles, chemical-agent monitors and global-positioning units, Spencer says. Some equipment is aging faster than it can be replaced, such as 20-year-old U.S. fighter aircraft that were designed to last 15 years. A Pentagon spokesman said earlier this year that spare parts are so scarce that the Air Force has been forced to "cannibalize" perfectly good aircraft.<br /><br />"When smaller, more poorly equipped forces deploy for more missions, the result is increased wear-and-tear and longer deployments for servicemen," Spencer says. "The result is a military weakened by aging equipment, low morale and inadequate training."<br /><br />The Clinton administration has deployed U.S. troops 34 times in less than eight years. During the entire Cold War (a 40-year period), the military was committed to comparable deployments just 10 times, Spencer writes. Today, for example, the Army has 144,716 soldiers in 126 countries, with the Kosovo campaign alone costing U.S. taxpayers $15 billion to date.<br /><br />Spencer says its no surprise the military is not meeting its retention rates, particularly when more than 5,000 personnel are forced to live on food stamps. A 1999 Navy survey to gauge the morale of its junior officers found 82 percent answered negatively, citing poor leadership, inadequate pay, and insufficient parts and equipment. The Air Force missed its 1999 retention goal by 5,000 airmen and expects to be down 1,500 pilots by the end of 2002.<br /><br />Try this:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/MissileDefense/BG1394es.cfm <br /><br />And this:
http://www.vaildaily.com/apps/pbcs....0414/COLUMS/104140015&SearchID=73192213067062 <br /><br />Hell this was a tv show on that right wing network PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/future/experts/warready.html <br /><br /><br />Now how about answering some of my questions?<br /><br />Why is it that we can execute someone with a drone, but can't listen to his phone calls? Third request<br /><br />Where is Kerry's master plan? Second Request<br /><br />Who are "those" people? Second Request<br /><br />How exactly would running away help the Iraqi people? Third Request.
