Just this morning I said “So which is easier to cut, weapons or personnel? Weapons create jobs. So that leaves…well…you.” As if to make me look brilliant, Stars & Stripes reports;
Defense officials will slash $78 billion in program spending and begin cutting up to 70,000 soldiers and Marines as federal budget officials tighten the purse strings on military spending.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said none of the end strength cuts are immediate, but in the next five years, officials will begin trimming about 49,000 soldiers from the Army and up to 20,000 Marines from the Corps. He could not say how long the process may take, but it is expected to save about $6 billion and help close an anticipated $24 billion hole in defense spending.
Like I said this morning, do you notice any other government agencies proposing personnel cuts, or cuts in their budgets at all? Do you mean to tell me that there’s not one useless person in every agency that they can do without? Yet there are 69,000 trigger pullers we won’t need five years from now?
I remember when the Clinton Administration was buying service members out of their careers in 1993 and a year later they were asking them to come back…and they could keep their buy-outs.
Bah; soldiers? We doan need no steennking soldiers!!!
As usual, it will take the next President to build up what this one is tearing down and it will be done at a higher cost than to keep the troops around during these little scuffles we have going on; ya know?
“…for it’s ‘Tommy this,’ and, ‘Tommy that,’ and, “Throw ‘im out, the brute!'”
Here we fuckin’ go again.
Thanks for the Kipling Sparky. 🙂
Here’s my “I told you so” Gates is going to offer to cut manning, Congress will be more than happy to, then they’ll hire more contractors to do more jobs because we don’t have troops to do it (meanwhile providing huge pay outs to corporate donors) and then turn around and bitch about no bid contracts going to evil KBR/Haliburton etc
It’s amazing…I feel less loved in the Army than back when I was in under Clinton…(at least we have bullets to train with right now)…
And then when the next Secretary of Defense who says something like Rummy said “You go to war with the military you have.” They’ll bitch- forgetting who cut us in the first place. It is amazing in the face of Iran & N. Korea we are talking about cutting military personnel incidentally one of the only things that Congress is really responsible for funding.. Oye!
Rethink Afghanistan is protesting again.
Hmmm
When a government services’ budgets get slashed, they fire teacher, police officers and fire fighters. Never the 3d Deputy Assistant Principal in Charge of Nutrition.
I wonder if the SecDef’s new argument is “[i]t’s for the children!”
On the flip-side, all the animus toward defense contractors will have to be put aside in order to buy the manpower necessary to handle all the warfighting and administrivia that won’t be done by those missing joes.
Lives will be lost as a direct result of this boondoggle. However, we must keep buying the votes of the poor and the old through welfare and Social Security! (Sarcasm intended…)
I just had a thought. Aint it funny that they are looking at getting rid of 70,000 soldiers at the same time they are hiring 68,000 IRS agents…….
70k soldiers verses 68k new IRS agents….Lets see here.
*FAIL*
We need a strong military to keep America free. Try to convince me that our King-in-Chief wants a FREE USA!
WTF, has the GWOT or whatever they call it now ended and all the troops are coming home? Guess Iran, North Korea and China have also decided to be our BFFs now.
It’s Deja Vue all over again.
It’s Deja Vue all over again.
It’s Deja Vue all over again.
It’s Deja Vue all over again.