You once again show that you have no idea what you are talking about. And once again, you are so blinded by ideology and partisanship that you simply put forth the same old same old, "It's Clinton's Fault" and perpetuating the myth that Clinton cut defense spending and gutted the military and our fighting forces.
Since I have had a longtime association with an electronics defense contractor that currently produces $5 billion in revenues , I think that I have a bit of an understanding about where the DoD budgets have been, and where they are going in the future.
The reality is that Bill Clinton's defense budgets roughly tracked the blueprint left by then-defense secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. Furthermore, Clinton insisted the Pentagon maintain a Cold War budget even without a Cold War to protect his party's right flank. For the same reason, Al Gore called for bigger defense budgets during the 2000 Presidential campain than did George W. Bush - - - a fact that almost no one recalls.
Between 1992 and 2003, the person who was President for the bulk of that time was . . . Bill Clinton. It's true that President Bush has been throwing money at the Pentagon since Sept. 11th, 2001, but defense planners will tell you that none of the impressive leaps in our military capability have taken place in the last 18 months.
You would have to be "deaf, dumb, and blind" to think that the tremendous C4ISR Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles - - -Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaisance were not developed during the Clinton Administration and under military budgets that were supported by the Clinton Administration.
Northrop's GlobalHawk saw it's first flight in February
1998. The RQ-1A Predator UAV first flew in 1994 and entered production in 1997, first seeing action in Bosnia in 1995. The Predator and GlobalHawk have more than proven their worth to the war-fighter during all sorts of military operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iraq, from joint-force military exercises invovling counter-narcotics surveillance, theater missile defense, to littoral warfare and offshore naval operations. The U2 continues to serve as the "Sentinel of Peace" around the world and received the Collier Trophy award for outstanding aeronautical achievment in 1998.
Moreover, in Clinton's State of the Union message in January of 1999, Clinton called to increase defense spending by about 110 billion dollars over the next six years. Military planners at the Pentagon had been pressing for the boost in Pentagon spending, and so did congressional Republicans. President Clinton agreed.
According to our current National Security Advisor Condi Rice, the Bush Administration "was able to reduce defense spending somewhat at the end of the Cold War," but the Clinton Administration "witlessly accelerated and deepened these cuts."
Actually, in the Bush Administration's four years, defense spending fell by 18 percent -- more than 4 percent each year. In the Clinton administration's seven years, defense spending had fallen by slightly less than 10 percent, which is slightly more than 1 percent each year. Moreover, Rice conveniently ignores the six-year plan George Bush presented to Congress in January 1993, which projected a continuing decline in defense spending through 1999. Clinton's actual defense budgets were $2 billion more than the final Bush defense plan for 1994-99, as Daniel Goure and Jeffrey Ranney explain in their new book, Averting the Defense Train Wreck in the New Millennium.
Condoleezza Rice then details the "devastating results" of Clinton's large cuts on the U.S. military. According to her, readiness has declined, training has suffered, pay has slipped 15 percent below civilian equivalents, the services are forced to cannibalize existing equipment, and the military has much difficulty recruiting and retaining people. Leaving aside whether these (at best, misleading) statements are true and resulted from Clinton's reductions, these conditions are not related to the amount of money spent on defense. The nonpay portion of the operations and maintenance account in the defense budget, which funds training, readiness, and maintenance, is 13 percent higher now than when George Bush, Sr left office.Moreover, if the spending on operations and maintenance is calculated on a per capita basis, it is nearly 40 percent higher today than in 1993.
Rice also accuses the Clinton administration of cutting defense spending to its lowest point as a percentage of GDP since Pearl Harbor. Using shares of GDP as a measure of military capability is both meaningless and misleading. If Clinton had not presided over such an extraordinary period of economic growth, his current defense budget might account for four, instead of three, percent of GDP. Should he be castigated for helping the economy grow? By Rice's GDP standard, Jimmy Carter was better for defense than George Bush.
Most troubling is Rice's suggestion that the U.S. armed forces in 2000 resemble what they were in 1940. But 60 years ago, our military ranked 16th in the world (between Portugal and Romania), was one-tenth the size of Germany's military, and had only 1.6 percent of the world's military personnel. The best way to measure the adequacy of defense spending is to compare it with that of other nations. During the Clinton administration, the U.S. share of worldwide military spending has increased. America now outspends all of its adversaries or potential adversaries combined. Together with its allies, it accounts for nearly 80 percent of the world's military expenditures.
U.S. Trade representative Robert Zoellick and a member of President Bush's cabinet is also off base in his critique of the Clinton administration. He writes that it has cut the military by around 40 percent. But it was the Bush administration that reduced the active forces by 444,000, or 21 percent, in four years, unlike Clinton, who cut it only 16 percent over seven years.
Reading Rice's and Zoellick's critiques of Clinton's defense budget reminds one of the early days of the Reagan administration, when several of the president's lieutenants complained about the 1970s as the "decade of neglect of defense spending." They should be reminded that in the first seven years of that decade, the Republicans were in charge and that during President Carter's tenure, defense spending actually increased.
Unfortunately, Rice's and Zoellick's "facts" found their way into presidential candidate George W. Bush's September 1999 speech on defense policy. And I guess people like you took it word for word, as if it was the truth.
It is also interesting to note that George Wilson's book, which cites former Air Force Chief of Staff Ron Fogelman and former Army Deputy Chief of Staff Jay Gardner as stating that an annual defense budget of $250 billion, plus inflation, should be plenty for the armed services in the post-Cold War period if spent properly. The Defense Budget in 2000 was $280 billion.
Finally, you fail to have much of a grasp on history since you fail to remember that during the Cold War, not a single Republican president, except Ronald Reagan, allowed defense spending to increase.
Once again Cuz, you have absolutely no command of the facts.
All you do is fall prey, in typical fashion to the typical "partisanship" that is often displayed on these message boards. You are like a little kid that jumps up and down crying for his Mommies attention, but has nothing more to say than BLAH BLAH BLAH. There are no facts to your post. No substance. Without question, you have showed yourself to be very ignorant.
