CDR: Re: And you thought Nazi agitprop was controversial?

[Kevin Elliott]

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 at 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