speech bit

[Minionman]

Of course, if you let only cost align your sites, you get the nuclear arms race again.

Be careful what you wish for, Minionman, as a solution to the burden of defense spending. You may get what you seek: another nuclear arms race. Or, a long war the next time someone thinks we are weakened sufficiently to risk having a go.

What most of you do not know, since you are not in the defense world so I will point out, is that President Bush -- supported and even egged on by old-Sec-Def-now-VP-Cheney, was poised to make a significant cut in defense spending and force structure . . . when September 11 struck. I had just left an acquisition post and was five months into a training post. The budgetary signs were almost screaming in bright neon. Further deense cuts were a comin.' Then the two towers fell, and all of a sudden, our flight instructor shortage, which was near critical, went away as reservists were mobilized by the score.

Pres Bush is spending more on defense and "homeland security" (Bah, who needs a new bureaucracy???) because the conditions require it. Or so it seems.

Yet five months ago, an exotic and very expensive weapons system, Comanche Helicopter, was CANCELLED!

Billions "saved" in future years. Or, rather, not spent. No, I don't want Congress to spend that other 9 billion on something else, not with the deficit and debt we have, I want them to NOT SPEND IT AT ALL IF WE DON"T HAVE TO SPEND IT ON DEFENSE.

Not until we have a better debt and deficit picture.

My suggestion was not to cut defense spending, actually I hadn't made any suggestions at all, although it might have seemed that way. What I was really trying to say was that Terrorists and the military are not so much more important than anything else that the military budget should be trown up just to get a higher %GDP. If there's a need for a huge military budget increase that can be shown to be more important than something like tax lowering or debt payment or health programs for example, they can raise it. Most importantly is making sure that that money is well spent. But if the military doesn't need a bigger budget in percent terms, than that money should go somewhere else, And by that I mean all the GDP money, not just government money, which is another confusing point in the other post.

In more philosophyish terms, I'm saying that having a powerful military is a means to an end, in this case the end is keeping people in the U.S. and other countries from being killed by some other groups of people. It isn't an end in itself. So, if the military keeps people safe and can do so for some time into the future, than the money should be going to other means to other ends.

Rememberm all this is coming off a % GDP comment, if SirDieAlot had used a diferent argument for increasing the money for the military more along the lines of what it would be useful for I would probably not have jumped as hard and would have agreed somewhat with what he was saying.