At 12:25 -0400 9/16/00, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
Spending the federal defense budget on almost anything other than military pork would be a good thing. The US millitary budget is more than half the discressionary spending of the US. It is greater than the combined spending of all the NATO allies combined and of the combined budget of the 19 other countries in the top 20 mmilitary spending nations.
LOL!!!! God I love weasel words. The key word here is *discressionary*. Yes, if you through out social security then the military is almost half of the budget (your exaggerating slightly, but I'll let it slide). The reason is that MORE THAN HALF of the US budget goes to SOCIAL SECURITY which is considered "nondiscressionary*. If you look at the total US budget military spending hovers right around 20%, interestingly enough roughly the same percentage it was before WWI and WWII. And yes, we spend more money than the rest of NATO combined. We also have a bigger economy than the rest of NATO combined. HEll, ignoring turkey we have more territory than the rest of NATO combined!
If the US military has a preparedness problem the problem is not lack of resources. Why is it that the people who always say that a problem cant be solved by spending more money sing a different tune for military spending?
I'm sorry, your wrong. I'm not entirely certain that we should be asking are military to do what we are asking them to do (Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, etc.), but as the saying goes, the cats out of the bag. The military is currently cannibalizing everything it can to keep as many units as it possibly can active. They are being asked to fight what amount to repeated wars with zero increase in there budget, a budget primarily designed for training and maintenance of equipment, the mass moves and long term actions they are being required to do. On my last ROTC FTX I was issued 10 rounds of ammunition for an entire days worth of maneuvers. This is not dissimilar to the practice of issuing broomsticks as rifle substitutes during the rearming prior to our entry into WWII. -- Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott <mailto:kelliott@mac.com> ICQ#23758827 _______________________________________________________________________________ "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." -- Justice William O. Douglas