Gates Ready to Make Deep Cuts in Weapons Budget
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Mar 17, 2009 6:15pmIt's got to be done, and using someone like Gates to do it is a smart plan. But we can expect defense contractors to throw a lot of political muscle and money into the fight:
WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration was drawing to a close, Robert M. Gates, whose two years as defense secretary had been devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt compelled to warn his successor of a crisis closer to home.
The United States "cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything," Gates said. The next defense secretary, he warned, would have to eliminate some costly hardware and invest in new tools for fighting insurgents.
What Gates didn't know was that he would be that successor.
Now, as the only Bush Cabinet member to remain under President Obama, Gates is preparing the most far-reaching changes in the Pentagon's weapons portfolio since the end of the Cold War, according to aides.
Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the officials said.
More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said.
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Oh what on earth will we do if we can only destroy the planet 50 times over instead of 100 in an effort to save our economy?! The bedwetting konservatives cower in the corner in fear now!
russia is about one tenth that.
And we should know, Sara Palin just did a warhead count from her house.
:<[)
when I see the numbers. I'll believe it.
{ I'm going to ask you one more time to stop yelling. Please stop. SiteMonitor}
Half our money goes to Wall Street, the other half to the defense contractors. It's a konservative wet dream!
Trade that drum for a fiddle old boy!
Pretty song, nickjacket.
tanks you're welcome.
Thanks for posting it!
Unless he is talking a 50% or greater reduction in defense spending, he is simply blowing smoke. The US currently accounts for almost half of all defense spending in the world. Even if we cut the defense budget in half, we would still dwarf the next highest contenders (Russia and China). This makes absolutely no sense at all on any level, but cutbacks on that scale are absolutely unthinkable to our political elites.
Yep, but China, as contender, may stop lending to this country. They expressed concern earlier this month about the U.S. debt that they're holding. I have a suspicion that certain budgetary assumptions about our future ability to borrow are being reevaluated.
You can't compare our budgets with those of countries where costs are lower (like China) 1 to 1, but even taking that into account we spend much more than anyone else.
That this sort of thing is even being discussed is a step in the right direction.
Considering how cynical all of us have become these last 8-12 years, the reticence is understandable...but would I be foolish in suspending all disbelief by hoping for some real, actual, meaningful cuts?
This is a good thing.
... to hope that some kind of meaningful spending cut to those items we can afford to throttle back on will actually happen. We have been watching the MIC expand their influence over and access to corporate welfare (our tax $$$) for many decades. Reducing some of that spending in the face of our current economic crisis is the only sane thing to do - but I fully expect the right wing and everyone who butters their bread with industrialized murder money to shriek their heads off about how Obama and the hated 'Left' want to render us helpless and weak before the dreaded forces of EVIL who even now are plotting our DOOM.
My fear is that these kinds of people - the kinds of folks who howl in public about existential threats to 'America' when all they really care about is protecting their access to the defense spending dollars they are addicted to (and everyone else can go hang) - are the type to settle a difference of opinion with a bullet rather than accept any change to their privileged status.
Wee still need them to fight al Quadea!!!!
Cut in half diagonally...they're easier to eat that way.
That and the missile defense system. You know... Lucas's thing? Star something or other?
I am in an area where destroyers are made. I am all in favor of cutting any expenditure on the military but many people will be without jobs.
apology
I may not deserve a reply, but...
what it was you need to apologize for.
I backtracked and found that you had called me a troll. Who cares? I don't. Forget it.
a bigger person.
Oh, my. How shocking!! (We all get hot under the collar-- look at the shit we've put up with for the past 8 years!)
On topic-- It's a step in the right direction. Obama said he'd go through the budget and make cuts. Rumsfeld was spending 100s of billions on space-age crap for his own amusement, and because he could.
making "creators" instead (musical instruments, computers, graphics tools, etc), or better yet help as many as want to become creative people?
However, since we’re essentially talking about govt contracts here it’s only work so there won’t be any real jobs lost or anything. I heard a Republican say this once so I’m sure they will stand behind their principles concerning this matter.
Disclaimer: In reality, they will cry like the wolf.
"Obama is putting this country at risk!"
"Dems are weak on Defense!!!"
So long as Obama is as articulate as he's been on other issues, it shouldn't be a problem. Nobody's going to argue that "Defense needs to be updated for the 21st century" or "The weapons we're currently manufacturing aren't appropriate to fight against terrorists."
Simply put, we need to get our priorities straight. We can certainly create as many jobs making the world safer as we did making the world more dangerous. We just have to want that kind of a world.
yes i think we must make the world safer with more and more terrible weapons !oh god yes ! rub one of them new m81 automatics against my crotch!who loves yah baby ? i do!
than a dollar spent on military contracts - so I've read. Changing procurement focus shouldn't be a problem for the President. But Obama is going to need all of his rhetorical skills to undo the damage that is being inflicted upon him by his plan to force military veterans off of VA rolls and onto private insurance carriers. The battle cry "Dems are weak on Defense" will be in all news cycles by the end of this week. His statements about sticking to the plan to do so will unravel all the good that Michelle has been accomplishing with the military families.
But the amount of muscle resisting *any* reduction will be more than considerable.
better yet, read the graphic novel.
good stuff.
...after Israel attacks Iran (coming soon) to a theatre near you (in Tehran)
I read somewhere that the annual budget to maintain one Carrier Strike Force would be near enough to fund Universal Health Care for every man, woman, and child in American for an entire year.
I wonder what one Carrier Strike Force and a Star War Defense Grid would get us. I wonder what it could fund for the people's infrastructure and improve our quality of life.
"I wonder what one Carrier Strike Force and a Star War Defense Grid would get us."
whoops sundog...I was gonna reply...decided not to...clicked wrong button.
Back in the campaign, Senator Clinton's health care plan had a $110 billion/year price tag on it. The entire Defense budget this year is around $550 billion.
I think your numbers are wrong.
I think he said they will be cutting weapons programs and some extraneous stuff. I didn’t hear him say anything about cutting the budget because the Secretary of Defense doesn’t set the budget. That be the job of Congress and they don’t cut the defense budget, ever.
In Blowback, Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis, Chalmers Johnson makes a devastating case of how American military empire building is laying waste to our economy and breeding hatred in the 780(+) countries in which we maintain military bases or posts. Nothing short of unilateral withdrawal from this empire, like the British did after WWII, will have any effect on our current economic crises and standing in the world. Fat chance of that happening.
The US has more military technology than nearly all other nations combined, yet the lobbyists and military industrial complex, as it's called, still wants to build and sell more stuff that doesn't work.
The reality of war is technology doesn't win wars by itself. Feet on the ground win wars, as has proven true in in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as many other wars and by many other countries as aggressors.
One of the biggest problems the US has in war, and is one of the main reasons the US is so gung-ho on technology, is that the US is afraid of having its people killed. US losses in Iraq are in the thousands compared to nearly a million Iraqis killed, yet people cringe at every GI killed. The US lost only around 50,000 in Vietnam to the Vietnamese people losing 2 million, yet the US lost. This can be traced back to World War II and the Japanese being willing to die, every single one of them, to defend their country and emporer.
The reality is, the US has become gun-shy about people dying for their country, while those in other countries and other causes are willing to die by the thousands and even by the millions. The US cannot defeat islam (which is the real chosen enemy, not "terrorism") when muslim extremists are willing to be suicide bombers and fly airplanes into buildings.
The only way to defeat that sort of willpower is to have it yourself, and the US doesn't. If US soldiers and the US public don't regain the stomach to deal with losing their own in large numbers, it will eventually be overrun. Footsoldiers with rifles are cheaper and more effective than any missile system that can be devised.
... don't bother building the USS George W. Bush.
It's traditional to name carriers after former presidents, though Nixon was not honored thus, and Jimmy Carter's name was given to a submarine in keeping with his own military career. (The Gerald R. Ford is a new hull, announced in 2007.)
For the same reason that Bush could announce in his State of the Union address of 2006 that the US would move away from its dependency on oil, and had to retract the statement within 24 hours.
The President doesn't really hold the power to make such decisions.
I cut you good man!
His first (OBAMA) budget is not good at all:
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/signals_fro...
Relative Spending
Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security
All numbers expressed in billions of dollars
Agency* FY 2009 Estimated FY 2010 Request
Department of Defense**
654.7 - 663.7
Department of State***
47.2 - 51.7
Department of Homeland Security
40.1 - 42.7
I am frightened that Usama Bin Laden is going to rise from his grave and attack us! How do we fight a zombie Usama who hates freedom and ice cream?!?!
HOW?
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