Iran's state media announced its first successful space research rocket launch
Thank you to Bain's Capital Partner, Chinese networking giant Huawei Technologies
Posted on 04/03/2008 6:03:30 AM PDT by tlb
@@ Boy, ain't that the truth!
They hardly spend at all on defense and take 6 week paid vacations instead, courtesy of their nanny states.
President Bush has been building alternative defense alliances, like his mini UN of responsible partners that exposed the A.Q. Khan network and the new attempts for an alliance with India to help contain China.
I don’t believe Reagan ever had both house and senate under Republican leadership. If he did, I don’t believe he would have allowed them to spend like Democrats thereby losing the trust of the people who put them there.
A lot of us worked hard to make that happen and they proved themselves no more fiscally conservative than the Dems.
I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I can get too excited about working to put people in office who forget why we put them there.
Their memories of the experience of actually having to live under communism are still fresh & alive.
This is very true. People do not understand that Republicans of the stripe of Poppy Bush and 43 do not really like big defense appropriations; they'd rather cut taxes for the people their grandaddies used to summer with in Newport "cottages" and on Martha's Vineyard.
Bush 41 had planned to mothball the battleships, several carriers and their escort ships, and disband several heavy Army divisions stationed in Germany when Saddam busted a move on Kuwait. And Dick Cheney, as SecDef, nixed a new production run of the F-14 Tomcat, and just to show Grumman they couldn't get price increases, ordered the jigs and dies for F-14 production destroyed. So now our carrier admirals are feeling pretty exposed facing Chinese Su-30MKK's and navalized Su-33's (which they will embark in large aircraft carriers), aircraft in the same performance league as the F-14 and several years newer, courtesy of Big Dick Cheney and Bush 41, and the admirals have nothing nearly as capable, or as long-range. They need their F-14's, and the last of those were retired last winter.
If Saddam had simply bided his time and waited another, say, 18 months, with the units disbanded and Goatboy coming into office, Saddam would be alive and well today and the master of the Persian Gulf.
Bush 43 sent Romney's budgetary eggs back in 2001 and told him to stand fast on appropriations levels, after Bush had promised increases for e.g. training and spares (depleted and neglected by DIRTXPOTUS 42) during the campaign debates. Romney sent over a budget incorporating funding to redeem Shrub's promises, and he got shot down very definitively. They also cancelled the Army's "Crusader" self-propelled artillery system, which was the needed long-range, super-accurate update to the 1950's-era M-109 gun-howitzer.
It wasn't until 9/11 that Bush 43 got religion on defense matters. But the money has gone for SDI (glad we did it) and operations in Afghanistan and Kuwait. As in the Vietnam era, the services are being starved at the margins for replacement equipment and upgrades, and the strategic nuclear arsenal is being rapidly "built down" -- which will NOT help us in future dealings with China and Russia.
See my last. Bush 43 showed us his policy preferences as soon as he came into office. He cancelled a major Army program and ordered the service chiefs to stand fast on budget requests -- validating the Clinton agenda he had run for office against -- and then did a $60 billion "carve-out" of existing budget priorities for SDI.
IOW, he actually reduced the Pentagon's budget for all the programs that were already starved for funding, to pay for his new initiative, because his very first priority was tax cuts for high income earners. That has remained a very high priority consistently throughout his presidency.
That's the facts, Jack.
Because the people with smaller cojones were taken out and shot by the Nazis and the Red Army?
Nixon also performed the public service of taking the powers that liberal Democrats and apologists like James MacGregor Burns and Arthur Schlesinger had drooled over for years and gradually built up for their fair-haired boy, Jack Kennedy, and showed them very bluntly how dangerous they were in the hands of someone who disagreed with them on policy grounds -- and didn't particularly like them, either.
Richard Nixon took the "imperial presidency" and shoved it up the liberals' wazoos, hard, sideways.
No wonder they didn't like him.
But that was a lesson the nation needed to learn, after a generation of Roosevelt-worship.
By doing so, he increased revenues to the Treasury.
As I've heard say, That's the facts Jack.
The locations selected in eastern Europe are also ideal for intercepting U.S.-bound Iranian ICBM's. Which was the main idea, discussion about protecting Europe aside.
I don't know whether the systems needed to be based in Czecho and Poland, though. I wonder whether they couldn't just as well have been based in Turkey and Greece, old NATO members. Jus' wondering.
Still, it's well that we are going ahead with deployment. The Russians can rave and cave all they want to, everyone knows those systems aren't intended to defend against Russian missiles.
Well why the hell not? We funded the entire system, and are now footing the bill for protecting Europe. What possible reason would they have for saying “No”? God, we’re stupid.
Which says nothing about reducing funding of DoD programs that was needed right now, as in, "three years ago".
He made a lot of it good later, after 9/11, but he told the Pentagon to do carve-outs instead of bulk-ups. The bump Romney sent him, to fund his campaign promises, was $60 billion. He nixed that. The carve-out for SDI was also $60 billion. Total swing down from what he promised us: $120 billion.
Clinton couldn't have gotten away with that.
Bush 43 didn't say, "we're going to defer Pentagon spending until we've received expected higher revenues" (which he'd have gotten anyway, and didn't need to cut the Pentagon's budget to get them). He said, "no increases, and oh, by the way, identify $60 billion in cuts for my new initiative".
Fact.
There are no Iranian ICBMs. There is nothing that the Iranians have that can come within thousands of miles of the U.S.
Not yet.
the best and cheapest missile defense for Iran is to take out any potential missiles in Iran.
We could not hit Tehran with a Minuteman III ICBM fired from the U.S. You're telling me that they will be able to do what we cannot?
“The locations selected in eastern Europe are also ideal for intercepting U.S.-bound Iranian ICBM’s. Which was the main idea, discussion about protecting Europe aside.”
The Iranians are way away from that capability. I don’t think they are going to wait until they have ICBM capability that advanced before acquiring N-weapons...with the resulting predictable response from the Israelis. I seriously doubt USA-defense is the main purpose of that ABM system. Defense of American bases in Europe maybe, most of which are not needed.
thanks for posting the facts that Bushbot FReepers just don’t seem to get.
Iran's state media announced its first successful space research rocket launch
Thank you to Bain's Capital Partner, Chinese networking giant Huawei Technologies
And Duncan Hunter!
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