Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [91]
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COMPARISON OF DEFENSE BUDGETS
New tanks requested in president’s budget
Reagan-Bush 1986: 840
Clinton-Gore 2001: 0
Bush-Cheney 2002: 0
New tactical aircraft requested in president’s budget
Reagan-Bush 1986: 399
Clinton-Gore 2001: 34
Bush-Cheney 2002: 58
New naval ships requested in president’s budget
Reagan-Bush 1986: 40
Clinton-Gore 2001: 6
Bush-Cheney 2002: 5
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Got it, kids? The contrast could not be more stark. Bush-Cheney ordered 11 percent more tactical aircraft than Clinton-Gore, but Clinton-Gore ordered 20 percent more ships than Bush-Cheney.
Did you know that in 1986 we were still fighting the Cold War? In current dollars, we spent $273 billion on defense in 1986 and $266 billion in 1996. Yes, that’s 2 percent less, but then again, the Soviet Union no longer existed. The Clinton budget in 1996 was larger than the outgoing budget of the first Bush administration—a budget developed by then DOD Secretary Dick Cheney.
During the 2000 campaign, it was the Republican ticket that ran against our military. It was, according to Bush and Cheney, “hollowed out.” Condoleezza Rice argued that Clinton had undercut our troops’ ability to fight by sending them into what the Bush team called “useless” nation-building exercises. We were, George W. Bush said, at our lowest state of readiness since Pearl Harbor. I saw that movie, and let me tell you, our lack of preparedness caused some serious problems—not just for Ben Affleck, but for Josh Hartnett, as well.
Nine months after Bush took office, we went to war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Soviets couldn’t conquer Afghanistan. Neither could the British in 1919. But somehow, we did it in a few weeks. With no new funding (the first Bush defense budget went into effect on October 1, 2002), Donald Rumsfeld had taken our “gutted” military and, with a little string and some baling wire, turned it into the greatest fighting force in the history of the planet.
The man is a fucking genius.
Or maybe Afghanistan (and then Iraq) was payoff for the “revolution in military affairs” in which Clinton invested so heavily. Take this scenario described by Fred Kaplan of the Boston Globe:
A U.S. Special Forces soldier, sitting on horseback, spots a Taliban target. He types out the information on his laptop computer and transmits the data to a Predator, a new unmanned drone flying 25,000 feet overhead. The Predator relays the data to commanders in Saudi Arabia, who direct the drone to the target for a closer look—and take a look themselves through its real-time video transmission.
The commanders then send the target’s coordinates to a U.S. bomber pilot in the area, who punches the coordinates into the computer of a “smart bomb.” The bomb is fired and explodes within 3 feet of the target.
“This sounds like science fiction, but it’s really happening,” said William M. Arkin, a defense consultant and adjunct professor at the U.S. Air Force School of Advanced Air Power Studies. More striking still, the whole process—from finding the target to dropping the bomb—takes 19 minutes. During the Gulf War, assigning a particular bomb to a particular target took three days.
This is called Network Centric Warfare. Clinton’s military brought it to fruition. It’s about giving the on-scene commanders a much clearer picture of the battlefield. Let’s take a look at how many tanks were involved: 0. Ships: 0. Yes, there was one tactical aircraft. But also a horse.
Quickly, let’s compare the military budgets of Lincoln and Reagan.
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COMPARISON OF DEFENSE BUDGETS
New horses requested in president’s budget
Lincoln 1864: 188,718
Reagan 1984: 3
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Source: Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes. Francis Trevelyan, ed. “The Cavalry.” Theo S. Rodenbough © 1911, Patriot Publishing