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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (129991)	12/20/2000 5:57:32 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570344

We never flat out ran out of money, but we have people leaving the service because of long deployments. Our readiness has declined. If something like Iraq came up again we would still be powerful enough to win but we would have less force to deeply which would likely mean that we would win but take longer to win and suffer more casualties. Tim, As I understand the problem its not so much people leaving as they are not entering. And again as I understand it, the reason is not because of deployment but "the economy, stupid". The military with a few exceptions (like air force pilot training) is seen as a lowly position and a course of last resort. With the economy doing so well and manpower in short supply, there is less need for military eligible people to actually go into the military. That's why the military has been creating and promoting as many of their perks as possible in the last few years in order to induce people to join. Most people don't know this but we don't have a deployable Persian Gulf size force available any more. I don't understand why that's a problem. We usually are never fully deployable in any part of the world.....I don't think it would be economically feasible. We spend billions on defense while in peacetime. Its enough in my estimate. We don't adequately house and feed our own people but we have enough $$$ to play Captain Amerika to the world. How much government should be involved in subsidizing housing or what level of housing is adequate is a whole separate issue. As far as playing "Captain Amerika" to the world that something Clinton started to do while at the same time slashing defense spending. If we are going to continue to be this involved then we will have to have larger defense budgets. I am afraid that it did not start with Clinton. In fact it was Clinton who has encouraged the participation of our allies and the UN for several reasons, one of which is to help us defer some of the costs from those operations onto those countries and organization. We have come to the point where we can not be the world's policeman.....at least not single handedly. And as far as I know, he is the first president to recognize that fact. As for how much $$$ need to be spent on housing and food...in my view, when none of us go hungry or have to live on the street.....not a popular concept, I am afraid. ted