A very good background on the problems the military now faces, can be found by searching the following topic:
Bottom-Up-Review, or without the hyphens, Bottom Up Review.
This was the Clinton Administrations 8 year plan to cut the military, and use the money saved for "domestic programs".
A very good background article to get one started on the subject is found on the Air Force Magazine web site:
http://www.afa.org/magazine/oct2003/1003bur.asp
The Legacy of the Bottom-Up Review
The Bottom-Up Review, completed 10 years ago this month, is one of the stranger episodes in the annals of Pentagon force planning.
Briefly, what happened was this. In March 1993, Les Aspin, the new Secretary of Defense, announced a whopping cut to the defense budget. Incredibly, he made his cut without calculating the impact the reduction would have on force capability. That and other details would be worked out in a “Bottom-Up Review” to follow.....
From the link below, is an overview of the cuts proposed by the Bottom up Review, or BUR:
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=6&sequence=2
Table 2-2.
U.S. Military Forces (By fiscal year)
Bottom-Up
1990 1993 1995 1996 Review Plan a
Strategic Forces
Land-Based ICBMs 1,000 787 585 580 500
Strategic Bombers 277 194 140 126 130
Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles 584 408 360 408 336
Conventional Forces
Land Forces
Army divisions
Active 18 14 12 10 10
Reserve b 10 8 8 8 5 or more
Marine Corps divisions c 4 4 4 4 4
Naval Forces
Battle force ships 546 435 372 357 346
Aircraft carriers
Active 15 13 11 11 11
Reserve 1 0 1 1 1
Navy carriers air wings
Active 13 11 10 10 10
Reserve 2 2 1 1 1
Air Forces
Tacttical fighter wings
Active 24 16 13 13 13
Reserve 12 11 8 7 7
Airlift aircraft
Intertheater 400 382 374 345 d
Intertheater 460 380 428 430 e
SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office using data from Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to the President
and the Congress (March 1996).
The above table for this is about half way down the article, and is easier to read.
There are over 8 million google hits for BUR.
The first link is good for a start to see the problems we are still facing from Les Aspin, and the Clinton ("I LOATHE the military!!")Administration's "Bottom-Up-Review".
Presidents Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton, Truman, Warren G Harding and Andrew Johnson all downsized the military. Interesting points of history, all.
It's 2006, people. I don't care who did what in the past. We've had more than enough time to fix, or begin fixing, the problem. Trying to pass the blame off on past administrations would have been a legitimate gripe in 2001. Now it's just embarassing.