Posted on 07/03/2004 5:56:21 AM PDT by FairOpinion
Readiness measures the ability of a military unit.to accomplish its assigned missions. Logistics, available spare parts, training, equipment, and morale all contribute to readiness.
The Facts About Readiness. In the early 1990s, the Bush Administration began to reduce the size of the U.S. military so that it would be consistent with post-Cold War threats. Under the Clinton Administration, however, these reductions in forces escalated rapidly, with too little defense spending, while U.S. forces were deployed more often.
Because the security of the United States is at stake, it is imperative to present the facts about military readiness:
T #1. The size of the U.S. military has been cut drastically in the past decade.
Between 1992 and 2000, the Clinton Administration cut national defense by more than half a million personnel and $50 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars. The Army alone has lost four active divisions and two Reserve divisions. The number of total active personnel in the Air Force has decreased by nearly 30 percent. In the Navy, the total number of ships has decreased from around 393 ships in the fleet in 1992 to 316 today. Even the Marines have dropped 22,000 personnel.
FACT #3. America's military is aging rapidly. Most of the equipment that the U.S. military uses today, such as Abrams tanks, Apache helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, surface ships, submarines, bombers, and tactical aircraft, are aging much faster than they are being replaced. Due to a shortsighted modernization strategy, some systems are not even being replaced. Lack of funding coupled with increased tempo and reduced forces strains the U.S. military's ability to defend vital national interests.
As weapons age, they become less reliable and more expensive to maintain. The services have attempted to provide for their higher maintenance costs by reallocating funds, but they often take the funds from procurement accounts, effectively removing the money from modernization programs. Shortages of parts and aging equipment are already affecting readiness, and the effects are expected to worsen. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon recently reported that spare parts are so scarce that the Air Force is made to "cannibalize" perfectly good aircraft for spare parts.
Conclusion. Under the Clinton Administration, the U.S military has suffered under a dangerous combination of reduced budgets, diminished forces, and increased missions. result has been a steep decline in readiness and an overall decline in U.S. military strength. Nearly a decade of misdirected policy coupled with a myopic modernization strategy has rendered America's armed forces years away from top form.
To deny that the United States military has readiness problems is to deny the men and women in uniform the respect they deserve. America's military prowess can be restored, but policymakers must first admit there is a problem. Only then can the President and Congress work together to reestablish America's top readiness capabilities.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage.org ...
Here is just one example:
"WASHINGTON -- Senator John F. Kerry's campaign yesterday seized on the Pentagon's call-up of thousands of former soldiers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan to step up its charge that the Bush administration's management of the military has left the Army spread dangerously thin."
What MUST be pointed out, is, that Clinton slashed not only the defense budget -- leaving the US military much worse equipped, than they should be --, but taht the size of the US military has been cut drastically under Clinton.
That is why it is necessary to recall reservists -- not because Bush "mismanaged" the war and the military efforts, as the Dems contend. Just the opposite -- Bush, as our Commander in Chief, and our brave military, together, have done a phenomenal job, despite the way Clinton left the military.
Bush is working hard to correct the problem but that can't be corrected overnight, in the meantime we do have a war to fight -- our very existence is at stake.
bump
The only thing that Clinton did do while in office is muck up the military.
But they had those lovely "Lewinsky" model berets so it all evens out.
"You know" (a little Hillry speak) when all is said and done I was in charge of the military, remember our first act was "gays" in the military.
I remember hearing Clinton and Gore bragging that they had cut the "government work force" by half during their administration.
Sounded good, until I checked and discovered that 95-percent of those "cuts" were due to the fact he drastically cut our soldier/military manpower.
As always with Clinton, believe half of what you see and nothing of what you hear.
Don't forget that little affair with the Red Chinese Army.
Let's be honest and bring up Fact #4. For 6 years Clinton had a GOP-controlled House and a GOP-controlled Senate and they did nothing, nothing at all to stop the reductions. So while I don't give Clinton a free ride on this, he certainly was aided and abetted by a GOP leadership that saw the military more as a pork-barrel for their districts than as a shield against our enemies.
I had forgotten how he helped the Chinese in their rocket launch ability.
Please ignore sweetliberty site. They are into collusions.
But read Parade Magazine interview with Rumfeld, Oct 12, 2001. Rumsfeld mentions military readiness and decades of neglect.
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/war/rumparade.html
Check out the senate votes to make sure.
http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/legislative/a_three_sections_with_teasers/votes.htm
I was thankful that I retired in 1992, before the draft dodger took office. I then went to work with a certain federal law enforcement activity, where many of the personnel loathed the military as much as billy boy. I noticed that one of the first things the clintooon lackies did was rehire those disloyal air traffic controllers that President Reagan fired for going on strike. I remember one of the worthless rehires complaining about being fired by the late Great President Reagan, I informed him that he should have never been rehired.
The budget cuts explains the "Army of One" campaign. That's about all Clinton would fund.
F.O. thank you!
Milligan, thank you for the link,
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/war/rumparade.html
which is quoted:
Oct. 12, 2001
Excerpt of Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine (Interview with Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade Magazine)
Q: This is a question that's been asked by many Americans, but especially by the widows of September 11th. How were we so asleep at the switch? How did a war targeting civilians arrive on our homeland with seemingly no warning?
Rumsfeld: There were lots of warnings. The intelligence information that we get, it sometimes runs into the hundreds of alerts or pieces of intelligence a week. One looks at the worldwide, it's thousands. And the task is to sort through it and see what you can find. And as you find things, the law enforcement officials who have the responsibility to deal with that type of thing -- the FBI at the federal level, and although it is not, it's an investigative service as opposed to a police force, it's not a federal police force, as you know. But the state and local law enforcement officials have the responsibility for dealing with those kinds of issues.
They [find a lot] and any number of terrorist efforts have been dissuaded, deterred or stopped by good intelligence gathering and good preventive work. It is a truth that a terrorist can attack any time, any place, using any technique and it's physically impossible to defend at every time and every place against every conceivable technique. Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filled with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them.
Q: Please briefly explain to our readers why it's not enough just to get bin Laden and al Qaeda. Why this threat ought to extend beyond that.
Rumsfeld: Well, because they have trained any number of people that are spread all across the globe, but there are a number of terrorist networks in a number of countries that have harbored terrorists, and to deal with one and ignore the rest would be to misunderstand the nature of the problem.
There is a correlation, really, between the countries that sponsor terrorism, and the countries that have been weaponizing chemical and biological, and they're working diligently to develop nuclear capability for the most part. Not in each case. But that nexus is something that ought to be of concern to people. Were that connection to occur, obviously you're talking not about thousands of people, but hundreds of thousands.
Q: What it sounds like you're saying too in this process then is that we're going to need to address Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, particularly in the light of even the evidence that with inspectors Saddam continued to build his arsenal through the 1990s and now we don't know what exactly has happened. Is that going to be a top priority as well?
Rumsfeld: Those are decisions for the president, but he has been very clear that he is deeply concerned about the problem of terrorism. He is going to find terrorists and keep them out and root them out, and he's going to create an environment that suggests to countries that are harboring them that they ought to stop.
... continuation of Excerpt of Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine (Interview with Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade Magazine)
Q: In hindsight, might the last decade be called the decade of neglect? We didn't even maintain spare parts for our military planes. What lessons should we as a people and our political leaders learn from the 1990s?
Rumsfeld: You're correct. They called it a procurement holiday, which is a euphemistic way of characterizing starving the defense establishment from needed capabilities.
The lesson is a lesson that it's a shame, but we really ought not to have to keep learning it. One would think we would be wise enough as a people to learn from history and to know that today we're spending a very modest percentage of our gross domestic product on defense. When a crisis occurs we suddenly say oh, my goodness, we can spend all we need to. Well, of course we can. But the thing to do is to spend it when you don't need to. Then you don't have to spend as much. Then it's the deterrent effect and the capability effect that you have that dissuades people from doing things like this. But to the extent you get relaxed and say well, there's no real threat today, we cannot worry about things, and allow your investment to decline, you then find that you have to increase it more than you otherwise would have and you have to do it because of a crisis. I guess Benjamin Franklin or somebody said that necessity is the mother of invention, but this country can afford to spend anything it needs to on our national security.
When I first came to Washington in the Eisenhower/Kennedy years, we were spending 10 percent of our gross domestic product on national security. When I was here as secretary of defense some 25 years ago, it was 7, 6, 5, percent, in that range, as I recall. Now it's down in the 2.8 or 2.9 percent. We are perfectly capable of spending whatever we need to spend. The world economy depends on the United States [contributing] to peace and stability. That is what underpins the economic health of the world, including the United States.
To think that we want to skim on our national security and put in jeopardy the world economy, put in jeopardy economic circumstance in this country it's so short-sighted and so immature and reflects a lack of a capability to understand history.
Q: Looking forward as well as looking back, you've been very forward-looking in your plans for the RMA. Now we're looking at transforming the military under duress and in an accelerated timeframe in a conflict. How do you prepare for the next war while you fight this one?
Rumsfeld: Well, one would hope our country would be wise enough to do it skillfully, but what we have to do is not look at existing threats, meaning countries or people. We need to look at capabilities. The kinds of capabilities that exist across the globe and that are revolving and spreading.
So rather than having a threat-based strategy we have fashioned a capability-based strategy that says we can't know of certainly knowledge where a specific threat will come from or when it will come because capabilities are so widely disbursed today. But we can expect those threats to come, and we can make a reasonably good estimate as to what kind of capabilities we will need to deter and defend against those threats when they do occur, regardless of where they come from. It was a paradigm shift in thinking that has been lost as a result of these terrorist attacks. But it is a significant conceptual transition or paradigm shift for our country that has taken place.
Q: Bio-terrorism is threatening a lot of Americans. How serious is this threat? Do we need a new Manhattan style project to deal with this? Are there other asymmetrical threats that you're more concerned about? And then one little tag on the end of that, given the concentration of political, government, and military leadership in Washington, how safe is this city in particular?
Rumsfeld: I worry about all the asymmetrical threats. One must do so. We know there are not significant armies, navies and air forces that can [test] us. Now one of the reasons there aren't is because we have capable armies, navies and air forces, and that dissuades people from thinking that that could be an asymmetrical advantage for them if we lacked a Navy or an Army or an Air Force.
Now therefore, what do they do? They go to the seams. They look for ways that they can advantage themselves using our technology, our capabilities, because of proliferation, things that we have pioneered, and for which we do not have ready defenses, and those are the ones you mentioned. They are terrorism, they are ballistic missiles, they are cruise missiles, they're weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological, and nuclear, and cyber attacks potentially.
I mean of all the countries in the world, we are more dependent on space and more dependent on information technology than any nation on the face of the earth, and they're all, they all represent weaknesses, if you will -- strengths on the one hand, but weaknesses on the other, because we have not hardened ourselves against those kinds of threats.
In the case of terrorism, because it's so difficult to do; in the case of -- We're working on cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, but there's been some sort of a battle in our country on the issue for many years, which has delayed and impeded progress. With respect to cyber warfare and weapons of mass destruction, those are things that are going to take a great deal more effort on our part. And homeland defense clearly was part of our defense strategy review well before the September 11th attack for the very reason that you suggested in your question, because of these asymmetrical attacks.
... final part of Excerpt of Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine (Interview with Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade Magazine)
Q: If this war becomes increasingly difficult, lasts for a long period of time, if there are setbacks or losses as there almost always are in most wars, what will you turn to for strength? What will you draw upon? And is there anything in particular that you're drawing upon already now?
Rumsfeld: Well, I guess you'd say the United States of America represents something so important to the world, our way of life, our free way of life. If one looked down from Mars to earth you would find that only a handful of countries are really capable of providing for their people, and where the people provide for themselves. That is to say where the political and economic structures are such that the maximum benefit for the most people is achieved. That is a big idea. That is something that is important. And we have to see -- if you care about human beings across the globe, you have to care that that example and that model, that engine for prosperity that benefits not just the people in our country but people across the globe, succeeds.
And in a world where, as human beings we know that people are imperfect and there are a lot of people who are, for a variety of reasons, engaged in doing evil things. And vicious things. And lethal things. Therefore, if we value that and if we value the people of the United States, there's no question but that we have to be willing to defend that way of life and to do that, people have to voluntarily put their lives at risk. Thank goodness we've got wonderful people, men and women in the armed services, who are willing to do that.
Q: Finally, one last question. Many people today shun public service, avoid public office. Why serve? Why did you choose to serve again?
Rumsfeld: I guess I had a practice of that over the decades. That plaque says, "Fighting for the right is the noblest force the world [affords]." (inaudible).
[pause]
Q: Are there any special challenges that we're facing as a nation as part of this war? Something that you think the American people need to be aware of?
Rumsfeld: There is one. Throughout our history, free people are free to be wise, and to be unwise. That's part of what freedom is. We've concluded that it's better than philosopher kings or dictators. If that's the case and one looks at our history and knows that that's the case, that means we can make mistakes, and if we're what, 260 or 270 years old, 280 years old as a country, we know we've made some mistakes. We've behaved in ways that have allowed crises to turn into conflicts through inattention, by thinking something was improbable, like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; by saying something that led people to believe it was okay for them to do something like invade Korea. We survived all of that in reasonably good form. There's been a lot of loss of life in human treasure as well as material treasure. But that was a different period. That was before weapons of mass destruction. We do not have that, what do you call it, a margin for error?
Q: That luxury.
Rumsfeld: Yeah. We don't have the luxury of making a mistake that big today. We have to be sufficiently -- We have to behave to a higher standard as free people. We are not as free to be as inattentive as we have on occasion been in the past. We're not as free to make a misjudgment as to what's probably or not probable because if we do make that mistake instead of hundreds of people or thousands of people, it's hundreds of thousands of people and potentially millions of people.
###
Milligan, thank you for the link,
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/war/rumparade.html
Oct. 12, 2001
end.
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