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Obama’s Secretary of the Navy Walks Back Complaints About Size of Fleet
Free Beacon ^ | 9/1/15 | Aaron MacLean

Posted on 09/01/2015 9:11:15 AM PDT by Nachum

You expect senior Obama administration defense appointees to be budget hatchetmen—that just comes with the territory—but Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus’s new remarks to Politico on the size of the Navy achieve impressive levels of partisan hackwork coming from a Pentagon official.

The issue is the ongoing debate over whether it is fair for Republicans to complain, as Mitt Romney famously did while debating the president in 2012, that the Navy’s surface fleet is about as small as it’s been since the First World War. Despite Obama’s snarky response at the time (“Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets…”) and the dogged efforts by some in the media to editorialize against the argument, what Romney said was true. So true, in fact, that his point was once made by the Secretary of the Navy himself, Ray Mabus:

“One of our main areas of focus has to be the size of our fleet. The CNO has repeatedly said, and I repeatedly have strongly supported him, that the minimal number of ships we should have is 313. We have 288 today in the battle fleet: the lowest number since 1916, which – during that time, the intervening years, our responsibilities have grown somewhat. But if Congress funds the shipbuilding program that we have laid out, we will reach a fleet of 325 ships in the early 2020s.”

The source of this quotation, incidentally, is Politico itself. And while it’s not entirely a surprise to see Mabus backtracking on this argument yet again, as it has become an ongoing embarrassment to the president, it is a bit surprising to see that Politico‘s senior defense correspondent has simply omitted mention of the fact that these words were once spoken by Mabus. Here are the new talking points, better than the old

(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: complaints; fleet; mabus; navy
Facts are indeed stubborn things.
1 posted on 09/01/2015 9:11:15 AM PDT by Nachum
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To: Jet Jaguar; NorwegianViking; ExTexasRedhead; HollyB; FromLori; EricTheRed_VocalMinority; ...

The list, Ping

Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list

http://www.nachumlist.com/


2 posted on 09/01/2015 9:11:41 AM PDT by Nachum (Obamacare: It's. The. Flaw.)
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To: Nachum

Mabus is widely recognized as The Village Idiot, in retired USN circles anyway.


3 posted on 09/01/2015 9:14:21 AM PDT by tgusa (gun control: hitting your target.)
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To: Nachum
".....as it has become an ongoing embarrassment to the president..."

IMHO it is impossible to embarrass this narcissistic boy king illegally residing in the people's Rainbow Hut.
4 posted on 09/01/2015 9:15:42 AM PDT by Cheerio (Barry Hussein Soetoro-0bama=The Complete Destruction of American Capitalism)
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To: Nachum

He bought EIGHT MILLION barrels of navy algae gasoline at $150 per gallon.

Obamas San Fran contributors made it.


5 posted on 09/01/2015 9:16:25 AM PDT by gaijin
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To: Nachum

If the Navy launched a thousand canoes, the Administration would say we have the largest Navy ever.


6 posted on 09/01/2015 9:16:50 AM PDT by AU72
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To: AU72

1000 canoes. sounds like Jefferson’s coastal gunboats. oh wait we have those. the LCS program.


7 posted on 09/01/2015 9:26:54 AM PDT by bravo whiskey (we shouldn't fear the government. the government should fear us.)
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To: Nachum

I don’t want a bigger fleet until the navy is fixed. They are buying these idiotic Littoral “combat” ships, the command levels are utterly filled with sodomite and perverts. The ships are being named for Harvey Milk and Gabby Giffords.

A small fleet is fine for now until the NAVY is fixed. You don’t fix perversion by increasing its size and scope.


8 posted on 09/01/2015 9:28:01 AM PDT by DesertRhino (I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but comSUrfmunists just ran for office)
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To: Nachum
...but Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus’s new remarks to Politico on the size of the Navy achieve impressive levels of partisan hackwork coming from a Pentagon official.

You know folks, I think we're too hard on the Left at times. I'm sure Mabus knows what he is talking about.

Sitting there in his tub, overseeing his fleet, I'm sure he felt safe. What with his rubber duck and his staff there to comfort him, it would be easy to understand him thinking the ships hidden by the bubbles, were sufficient...

Sounds silly? Well, this is the level of understanding one would have to have, to think Mabus is right.

Sad days for our nation...

One hopes our nation will survive until January of 2017, so a new person can get this nation back on track again.

At this point, signs point to a Left so desperate to destroy this nation, that you wonder if there will even be a 2016 election.

If Trump is our nominee, does anyone besides me question if the Republicans wouldn't be just as eager to avoid that election as the Left?

Something to consider.

9 posted on 09/01/2015 9:41:07 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (It's beginning to look like "Morning in America" again. Comment on YouTube under Trump Free Ride.)
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To: DoughtyOne

The fact is, the Establishment Republicans have decided to plunder the USA after taking all the money and running. Obvious to me, should be to others.


10 posted on 09/01/2015 9:48:24 AM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (My Batting Average( 1,000) (GOPe is that easy to read))
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To: stephenjohnbanker

I agree.


11 posted on 09/01/2015 9:49:27 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (It's beginning to look like "Morning in America" again. Comment on YouTube under Trump Free Ride.)
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To: DesertRhino

Clinton was the sad, sorry, SOB who demanded that all branches of our military accept queers and lesbians. He did this in 1999 when he went against the pay raise that was approved for the military. Clinton put low ranking married EM on food stamps. What has happened to our nation’s military is a damn disgrace and it was Clinton who demanded that women be allowed to serve in combat MOS’s. Hell, Bill hated the military as he had lied to an Air Force LTC or COL in Arkansas.


12 posted on 09/01/2015 9:55:30 AM PDT by Lumper20 ( clown in Chief has own Gov employees Gestapo)
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To: gaijin
He bought EIGHT MILLION barrels of navy algae gasoline at $150 per gallon.

Someone should have gone to prison for this.

13 posted on 09/01/2015 10:05:31 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Let him who pays no taxes, also not vote!)
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To: DesertRhino

Reminds me of the song: “I always voted at my parties call and I never though a thing of my self at all. I thought so little they rewarded me by making me the Admiral of the Queens navy” Gilbert and Sullivan. Need leader in White House.


14 posted on 09/01/2015 12:00:57 PM PDT by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll Onward! Ride to the sound of the guns!)
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To: Nachum; blueyon; KitJ; T Minus Four; xzins; CMS; The Sailor; ab01; txradioguy; Jet Jaguar; ...

Active Duty ping.


15 posted on 09/01/2015 5:51:11 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
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To: tgusa
Mabus is widely recognized as The Village Idiot, in retired USN circles anyway.

He certainly doesn't do anything to dissuade anyone from thinking that way, does he?

16 posted on 09/01/2015 7:43:51 PM PDT by Mark17 (Heaven, where the only thing there that's been made by man are the scars in the hands of Jesus)
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