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"The US can not EFFECTIVELY meet its objectives of facing 2 foes at different global regions. That is a fact. And although i love the US military and am in awe of it, i do not blind myself to the fact serious work needs to be done to correct nearly a decade of atrophy"

What are you basing this on? Rumsfield just said on friday that we could fight two wars at the same time. Is he lying?

I think we're seeing the lobbyists for more defense spending putting this stuff out !

I agree Clinton did cut the military more then he should have. He and the GOP Congress are to blame for this. The GOP went hog wild cutting the military the last 10 years and they are now jumping on Bush's back for the ride to build it back up. Look up the facts and you'll be pissed at what they tried to cut.

The biggest problem right now with the military isn't the numbers as we hear in the news but the quality of what we have.

We have a severe shortage of spare parts for most of our aircraft because it costs money to keep a part on a shelf. The C-5 fleet has 50% of them in maintenance because they're waiting for parts. The big problem I see is a long drawn out war just like the homeland defense deal we just went through but draining the logistic arm of our military.

They're replacing C-5's with C-17's that carry 50% of the load. Well, what happens to the other 50% of the airlift requirements? 10 years down the road we will have a problem because there will be no C-141's at all and only 10% of the C-5's will be flyable and congress hasn't funded more C-17's to replace all these while they want to fund a 200 billion dollar lease program for a replacement for the KC-135's that can go another 30 years. Our fighters are 30 years old and there isn't any 1 for 1 replacement deal on the books so what happens to them in 10 years when 80% are grounded for parts?

Talk about scratching you head?

You seem to have indepth info on some of this stuff, so let me ask you this because maybe you can explain it to me. Why would they replace a good aircraft with one (the C-17) that can only carry 50% of the load? I really do not understand when such actions are taken.

Do you know of any logical reason for them to do this? It seems these paperpushers and policy makers are placing american soldiers in potential jeopardy.

Actually this reminds me of a documentary i saw where this maintenance chief on one of the Aircraft Carriers was complaining about the lack of parts, and that he was being forced to cannibalize some F-18s so that he would get parts for at least the rest of them! Why?

Instead of spending all that cash on the C-17, why not upgrade and keep the older version(that could carry more) , and then spend the saved money on parts for needed military hardware.

To me it seems weird, actually downright strange. And i would appreciate if you could enlighten me on why people who should be helping save American lives are risking them. Please, if you can.