[dread78645]

And your point about the ships being cut out by Bush Sr and Cheney. Again, don't get carried away here. Bush and Cheney did in fact cut the military after the end of the Cold War. But Clinton took those cuts and drove them much, much deeper...at least in the Army. Many of us believe the levels Bush Sr planned are about right in today's world. Those cuts that Clinton added to the original cuts are what many of us see is where the problem came from.

Geo. HW Bush's 1991-92 budget hit the Navy with a 21% cut (the Army and AF were in the 30% range).

People losses where only about 75,000 (compared to the Army's 245,000); but the draw-down hurt operations pretty bad.
Went from 2 battleships to 0, 87 attack subs to around 50 (plus or minus the Virginia class), 14 carriers to 12 (and ran the dogshi+ out of USS America before sending her to scrap), cut out half a generation of cruisers, a whole new class of frigates.
MSC (sea-lift to move tanks and trigger-pullers from here to there) went down to around 22 ships; it needs at least 40 to move 2 armored divisions within 30 days according to the "plan"; fleet oilers went from 35 to 21 (that's why USS Cole was in Aden).

All in all, the plan would have taken the Navy from Reagan's 545 ships down to just under 400 ships by 1995.

Along came Billy-Jeff and a bean-counter Les Aspin with a "Bottom-up-review" that proposed a 330 ship fleet by 1998. Amazingly, Clinton didn't much mess w/ the Navy budget, but the other services got whacked again.

[Veracious Poet]

Thanks for the info, unfortunately the NeoCons on the board (some of them don't even know that's their bent towards that ideology) have decided to hell with the facts, civility and fair discussion, smearing ALL that don't blindly follow their mindset as lefty commies (a trick from the liberal's playbook).

Even though I don't agree with Gen. Zinny on many points, I thought giving the man credit where credits due was in order before attacking his words on 60 minutes.

God Bless...