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Subject: democrats claiming to be responsible for strong military
freedom    5/23/2003 4:46:23 AM
I could not believe mario cuomo on fox's hannity & colmes claiming that the military we have today is strong because of bill clinton. According to fox, clinton cut military spending 7 out of the 8 years he was in office. also under his watch the navy went from over 450 ships to 280. Even though i am a democrat i am rapidly losing faith in my party.
 
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Thomas    RE:democrats claiming to be responsible for strong military   5/23/2003 5:40:34 AM
It is generally acknowledged, that having a democrat for president in the US is dangerous for world peace and the US in particular. Woodrow Wilson: Democrat WWI FDR: Democrat (he was admittedly forced into it and saw it way before congress)WWII Truman: Democrat Korea IKE : republican ??? Kennedy: Democrat. Cuba Vietnam Johnson: Democrat Vietnam Nixon: Republican ???? Ford: Republican ???? Carter: Iran Reagan: Republican minor police action Bush Sn: Republican (preempted Clinton) Clinton: Monica Bush Jr: Republican Cleans up after Clinton
 
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Soylent Green    RE:democrats claiming to be responsible for strong military   5/23/2003 9:07:03 AM
Harry Truman was one of the greatest Presidents of the 20th century. After Harry Truman things started to go downhill a bit. And then a lot.
 
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Phoenix Rising    RE:democrats claiming to be responsible for strong military   5/24/2003 7:44:02 AM
There has been a break in the tradition of Democratic leadership between JFK and Carter. I've long said that the Democrats would be well served by going back to their roots, strong on social issues but also favoring strong national defense and a willingness to use it. After all, it worked--with the exception of Eisenhower (who was an international legend and an American hero, after all), we had Democratic leadership from 1932 to 1968. --Phoenix Rising
 
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Shaka of Carthage    RE:democrats / republicans ... reality check time.   5/24/2003 1:00:48 PM
Does anyone seriously believe there are MAJOR differences in the political beliefs of the two parties? There isn't. The US political system is totally different than other "democratic" systems that are out there. As such, there is no "party loyality" in the sense that all members of a party vote one way. Ask someone from the UK or Canada how it works there. You'll see the difference. The US Defense budget could be slashed by 25 to 50% and still give us the same combat effective military that we have today. The real question is why is there so much waste. No politician can safely address that.
 
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American Kafir    RE:democrats claiming to be responsible for strong military   5/24/2003 3:14:27 PM
Claiming Democrats built our strong military is much akin to claiming termites painted the Mona Lisa.
 
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Phoenix Rising    RE:democrats / republicans ... reality check time.   5/24/2003 3:17:16 PM
SoC, What makes you say we could slash 25% off the military budget and be equally effective ... particularly in the long term? R&D would likely be one of the first things cut, if history is any indication. I agree with your point about waste, but I think that we should spend our $400bn more efficiently, not try to find ways to cut corners. It really did lead to deficiencies in the 1990's that we had to paper over and pretend didn't exist. Avoiding mentioning problems is not the same as dealing with them. --Phoenix Rising
 
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American Kafir    RE:democrats claiming to be responsible for strong military   5/24/2003 3:23:33 PM
No criticism of Clinton's warmongering defense priorities would be complete without mentioning that while he was de-commissioning one ship per month average while he was in office, he was sending the military to bomb 9 different countries and deployed the military over 30 times. It's pretty bad when an aircraft carrier has to be stripped of planes to cobble together a makeshift troop transport to attack Haiti.
 
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Shaka of Carthage    RE:democrats / republicans ... reality check time.   5/25/2003 1:14:50 PM
This is really a different topic, so if you would like, we could put something in the "Procurement" (is there a Defense Budget Topic?) topic. But let me answer your question briefly. If you compare the money we spent at the top of the Cold War, to what we spend today, you will see that we are spending more today. I was around back in those days and we all believed that we were badly outnumberd so we had to heavily spend for Quality and Tech. Comparing the manpower levels between those two times is also interesting. We have less manpower today and less combat units. But when you compare the ratio of combat units to manpower, you find we have a worse ratio today. And back in those days, we all knew that when Soviet Union attacked, we would have to mobilize large numbers of units, so the active military had a large number of "hollow" unit (ie cadre) awaiting new men "when the ballon went up". So who are we facing today? And what is going on? So you are correct, we don't spend it effiecently. And we have waste. Problem is, its alot worse than you think. I'm amazed that you even agree that 25% is waste. I commend you for that. I look at the officer to enlisted ratio, and its a frightening number. I'd start there, with the flag officers (Generals and Admirals).
 
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