You make some valid points.
Here is the Reader's Digest version of what is going on.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/military/dp-nws-milupdate--0218-20130217,0,613825.story
Despite what Rand Paul and Rush are saying, these are not "baseline budget" tricks and the military is not "crying wolf" as even some Republicans have irresponsibly charged last week.
When Obama and the Democrats dreamed up the Sequester, they never thought the Republicans would agree to gut Defense (18% of the budget, yet it must take 50% of the cuts). All parties know this will hurt the economy (probably 2 million jobs total lost with Sequester), it will cause deep harm to the military, and it will break faith with our men and women in uniform.
The Republicans basically gave up with the Sequester during the Fiscal Cliff negotiations in Dec/Jan and only decided to focus on taxes. News reports said even the Democrats where shocked that they had to bring up the cuts - the Republicans were no longer interested in discussing them. All they did was delay them 2 months, and now they are here.
This is going to be a disaster. Obama is off playing with his homosexual golf buddy boy-toys, and the nation's military and economy are about to go off the real cliff.
The Republicans are like that character in the movie "Armageddon." They have decided to "Embrace the horror."
It is a terrible strategy, but the Tea Party "burn it all down then!" wing has won. The military is going to suffer a cut beyond the 13% across the board cut, because they have to take most of the money from Operations and Maintenance.
This is going to be bad. Don't let anyone fool you. Believe me.
thanks for the info, SkyPilot. It was unbelievable that Repub’s agreed with these cuts in Defense when Sequestration was originally agreed to. The down the road is here.