Gee, that's not what the FACTS say;
FACTS:-With the exception of Ronald Reagan,
every Cold War Republican president actually cut military spending. Every Cold War Democratic President increased it. -Republican Presidents
Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford cut defense while Democrats Kennedy, Johnson and Carter increased defense spending. http://www.cdi.org/issues/milspend.html FACTS:GHW Bush:"Two years ago,
I began planning cuts in military spending that reflected the changes of the new era. But now, this year, with imperial communism gone, that process can be accelerated. After completing 20 planes for which we have begun procurement,
we will shut down further production of the B-2 bomber. We will cancel the small ICBM program. We will cease production of new warheads for our sea-based ballistic missiles. We will stop all new production of the Peacekeeper missile. And we will not purchase any more advanced cruise missiles. … The reductions I have approved will save us an additional $50 billion over the next five years. By 1997 we will have cut defense by 30 percent since I took office."
-State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 1992
http://www.c-span.org/executive/transcript.asp?cat=current_event&code=bush_admin&year=1992FACTS:Rumsfeld:"Overall,
since I've been Secretary, we will have taken the five-year defense program down by well over $300 billion. That's the peace dividend. … And now we're adding to that another $50 billion … of so-called peace dividend."
Cheney"The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward. AH-64 . . . forced the Army to make choices. I said, "You can't have all three. We don't have the money for all three." So
I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out. That would save $1.6 billion in procurement and $200 million in spares over the next five years.
-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jan. 31, 1992;Cheney proceeded to lay into the then-Democratically controlled Congress for refusing to cut more weapons systems.
"Congress has let me cancel a few programs. But you've squabbled and sometimes bickered and horse-traded and ended up forcing me to spend money on weapons that don't fill a vital need in these times of tight budgets and new requirements. … You've directed me to buy more M-1s, F-14s, and F-16s—all great systems … but we have enough of them."Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearings,
testifying about plans to cut Army divisions by one-third, Navy aircraft carriers by one-fifth, and active armed forces by half a million men and women, to say nothing of "major reductions" in fighter wings and strategic bombers.gw bush2005 budget;
Pentagon plans to cut costly weapons programs such as an Air Force advanced fighter plane, a stealthy Navy destroyer and the next generation of nuclear submarines. Bush's missile defense program would likewise lose billions of dollars in funding in coming years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3319-2005Feb6.htmlPentagon Scales Back Arms Plans Rising war costs and a stubborn budget deficit have forced the Pentagon to propose billions of dollars in cuts to advanced weapons systems...
With the cutbacks and additions, the Pentagon would trim $30 billion over the next six years from its original $89 billion defense buildup.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48425-2005Jan4.htmlPlans to reduce Pentagon spending for weapons in order to pay for the war in Iraq would cut sharply into missile-defense programs managed in Huntsville and kill two Army missile programs outright.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office wants to slash missile-defense spending by $1 billion in the fiscal 2006 budget that the White House plans to send Congress in the next few weeks. The plan would continue to reduce missile-defense spending by $800 million a year until 2011.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050123-missile-projects.htmFACTS:Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the same hearings, testifying about plans to cut active armed forces by half a million men and women.
-testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jan. 31, 1992
Rumsfeld"...for the first time in 35 years, U.S. military leaders are talking about increasing troop strength. To some politicians and commentators, the bombing of the lightly guarded U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last week was an argument for increasing not only the U.S. presence in Iraq but the overall size of the military too. Officially, the Pentagon insisted that neither was necessary.
As for the idea of expanding the Army generally, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is opposed.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?Lawmakers have already authorised the Pentagon to use emergency war budgets temporarily to increase the size of the army by 30,000 to 512,000 soldiers. But Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, has opposed legislative changes that would force the army permanently to increase its so-called "end strength" or numbers.
http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=1456 Dick CheneyCheney also moved to
cut the armed forces by a half-million troops, and to shut down more than 40 military bases that, as a result, would no longer be needed.
http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Dick_Cheney_Defense.htm bush More Military Bases in US to Be ClosedThe Pentagon plans to shut down or scale back some of the 425 facilities, the first such effort to save money in 10 years. The downsizing is part of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's long-term transformation of the Cold War-era military.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=516956 No Bankruptcy Protection for TroopsU.S. Senate Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to shield military personnel from changes to bankruptcy law that would force more debtors to repay their creditors.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aamWalvvBr.8&refer=usVeterans' Benefits "hurtful" to National Security, says Pentagon The Wall Street Journal describes the pittance set aside for veteran’s benefits as "Congress’ generosity," even as the Republican-controlled Congress and Bush Pentagon get set to slash billions more from Veterans Administration’s (VA) programs. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (1-25-05), Pentagon official David Chu, in a mockery of the contribution of veterans, defended a new round of cuts by ironically describing funding for programs like veterans’ education and job training, health care, pensions, VA housing and the like as "hurtful" to national security.
http://classwarnotes.blogspot.com/2005/01/veterans-benefits-hurtful-to-national_26.htmlBack from Iraq - and suddenly out on the streetsAn increasing number of veterans returning from Iraq or Afghanistan ending up homeless. Psychological trauma, high housing costs, gaps in pay between civilians and the military which mean ex-servicemen cannot save for deposits and the lag in getting VA assistance all contribute to this growing problem.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0208/p02s01-ussc.html Bush Budget Raises Drug Prices for Many VeteransPresident Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said...
The government had no immediate estimate of how many veterans would be affected if the user fee and co-payment proposals were adopted. But veterans' groups said that hundreds of thousands of people would end up paying more and that many would be affected by both changes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/politics/07budget.html?oref=loginSoldiers dying for lack of $20 tourniquetsSince at least a month before the war in Iraq began, medical experts in the Army and other services have called on the Pentagon to equip every American soldier in the war zone with a modern tourniquet. The simple first-aid tool - a more sophisticated version of the cloth-and-stick device used by armies for centuries - could all but eliminate deaths caused by blood loss from extremity wounds, the most common cause of preventable death in combat, they argue. The cost would not likely exceed $2 million, or about two-thousandths of a percent of the $82 billion proposed for the war this year.
Yet many of the nation's soldiers - tens of thousands, some doctors and Army medical officials estimate - continue to enter battle without tourniquets. And some bleed to death from battlefield injuries that would not be life-threatening if a proper tourniquet were available, according to more than a dozen military doctors and medics...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.tourniquet06mar06,1,4505132.story?coll=bal-home-utility&ctrack=3&cset=trueAdd in lack of bullets, lack of rifles, lack of body armor, lack of up-armored vehicles, lack of clean water, and one backdoor draft -aka "stop-loss" - after another.
Gee...the FACTS say republicans are full of shit to call Dems "weak on defense". But then, republicans never did bother with facts.
There's what republicans say...and then there's
FACTS.
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