This year has been refreshingly different. President Obama and his defense secretary, Robert Gates, have made a compelling case for ending weapons programs that significantly exceed their budgets or use limited tax dollars to buy more capability than the nation needs. And Congress has agreed — somewhat.
The $680 billion defense authorization bill signed into law by President Obama last week pares back or cancels billions of dollars in expensive weapons systems that are either anachronistic, redundant, poorly performing or exceed the military’s real requirements.
Why are we concentrating on any of these weapons systems when our new war is against people who use improvised explosive devices, mortars and small arms?
The military anti-air and Tank elements in these circumstances are useless in Iraq as it stands, yet we want more missile systems when we already have systems in place that meet the current requirements?
Great judgment call for Obama. I do not always agree with him but this was a smart move.
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“The egalitarian mania of demagogues is even more dangerous than the brutality of men in gallooned coats... Anyone who has been oppressed can get back on his feet if the oppression did not cost him his life. A man who has been equalized is physically and morally ruined." - Ernst Jünger (March 29, 1895 – February 17, 1998)
I agree. Too many pet projects of Congressmen went on for far too long. If our military says they don't need it, then why buy it?
I like Gates more and more. He seems like a real stand up pragmatic guy. Definitely a breath of fresh air after Rumsfeld. Really glad Obama kept him on.
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I am a Christian. I am a liberal. No, these two are not mutually exclusive. Accept it and move on.
"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future"
- Oscar Wilde
"I may disagree with everything you say, but will defend unto death your right to say it."
- Voltaire
I agree. Too many pet projects of Congressmen went on for far too long. If our military says they don't need it, then why buy it?
I like Gates more and more. He seems like a real stand up pragmatic guy. Definitely a breath of fresh air after Rumsfeld. Really glad Obama kept him on.
Makes you wonder why Bush picked him.
__________________ It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.
-- Abraham Lincoln
They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Ben Franklin
As far as why Bush picked him, more and more I've recently seen indications that Bush was pulling away from the Cheney influence at the end. perhaps had he done so earlier, we might have had the President that people thought they were voting for.
__________________ The judge and the dreamer stood face to face ... One stranded in time, one lost in space.
The tenderness and love of God our Savior has dawned in our lives; He saved us not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of His mercy. Titus 3:4-5 (Jerusalem Bible)
"What would the church be like if we erred from an excess of compassion rather than from a stingy and legalistic lack of it." - Brennan Manning
If the defense budget is so great than why is there not enough troops in Afphganstan? We are fighting for nothing right now-because Obama won't send them more troops. Take the money they have cut back on and use it for this then.
__________________ Sola Scriptura is Eternal Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, 2 Peter 1:20. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams (October 11, 1798). Roe vs. Wade - 45 million **Proverbs 6:16-17 - states that there are seven things that are an abomination to the Lord; one of them is the shedding of innocentblood. The B.O. Must Go! Huckabee in 2012
If the defense budget is so great than why is there not enough troops in Afphganstan? We are fighting for nothing right now-because Obama won't send them more troops. Take the money they have cut back on and use it for this then.
Because paying a defense contractor to develop the latest and greatest fighter jet is patently useless in a country like Afghanistan. No matter how many of these latest and greatest jets we have, it still won't help us out in Afghanistan. The thing we need to succeed in Afghanistan is young men who are willing to get their heads blown off, and they're in somewhat finite supply (though the recession has helped).
Every country who's tried to occupy Afghanistan has failed. They keep at it for awhile, but the insurgencies and the problems they're trying to resolve fester indefinitely. I have a hunch we're going to be there indefinitely too, making sure that groups like Al Qaeda can never get too established there... but I'm not certain what our hopes on nation-building are.
__________________ If guns cause violence keyboards cause typos. Onlyy the nyive blieve objects re capble fo connscius acccts.
My checks keep comin and my VA doc seems happy. But Obama is gonna change all that I need to go down to Mexico already to get some medical things done cheap. Im thinkin on movin on down there to San Felipe anyway cause I like fishin anyway
Government cannot waste tax dollars on military seeing as DEFENSE is only one of three actual responsibilities of the government.
Leftist nonsense.
LOL. Are you saying there's no government waste in the defense industries? Now that's funny! I've got a $3,000 toilet seat lid you might be interested in.
__________________ "So here we are, wallowing in our dysfunction. Governed -- if you listen to the rabble rousers -- by a black nationalist from Kenya smuggled into the United States to kill Sarah Palin's baby. " Bill Moyers.
If the defense budget is so great than why is there not enough troops in Afphganstan? We are fighting for nothing right now-because Obama won't send them more troops. Take the money they have cut back on and use it for this then.
Because a certain predecessor to Obama decided to invade Iraq in response to an attack by insurgents based out of Afghanistan? And now we're invested in Iraq in the classic, "you broke it, you bought it" sense.
I'm glad Bush wasn't in office in 1941, or we'd have bombed India after Pearl Harbor. Afghanistan is a lost cause. When we had bin Laden and company holed up in a cave complex there we should have just dropped a tactical nuke and been done with it.
__________________ NOTE: To posts seriously comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, I respond only with pictures of cute, fuzzy animals.
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