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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (60632)	12/8/2002 4:50:54 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Respond to of 281500

Spending Ourselves to Death Our new defense budget is more than twice that of Russia and China combined...http://www.thenation.com/failsafe/index.mhtml?bid=2&pid=163 11/22/2002 @ 2:50pm E-mail this Post Congress just passed the defense budget for 2003, and there are a few small pleasant surprises. According to an analysis by John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World, our elected representatives: * Insisted on substantial oversight over the National Missile Defense program, rejecting a White House request for a blank check. There will now be a one-time review of the costs, performance record, ability to keep to schedule and military utility of a missile defense system. * Stopped speculation that missile defense might use nuclear weapon-tipped interceptors to shoot down incoming missiles. Defense Department officials had flirted with that idea earlier this year, and House Republicans had encouraged researching it. The Democratic Senate shot the idea down. * Refused to permit work on low-yield nuclear weapons, and slowed - but did not stop - work on a nuclear "bunker buster." The administration is intrigued by the possibility of deploying "mini-nukes" in otherwise conventional war situations. Arms control groups counter that use of any nuclear weapon crosses a dangerous and unnecessary line. * Sailed to the rescue of the Nunn-Lugar programs, which work to secure weapons of mass destruction, and related materials and knowledge, in the former Soviet Union. The Congress provided more than $1 billion in funding for those programs at the Energy Department, and freed up previously allocated money at the Defense Department for destroying Russian chemical weapons stocks. * Refused to approve the Defense Department's request for exemption from seven environmental laws. Collectively, it almost sounds like good news - a series of small victories for common sense. But, very, very small victories, says Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World. "If you look at it, it's an almost $400 billion budget, and the president got pretty much everything he wanted," Isaacs says. For those keeping track, this year's $396 billion is more than three times the combined defense spending of Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Sudan and Syria. America outspends Russia, the second-biggest defense spender, by a factor of six. And for every "victory" for common sense, there's some backsliding in this bill. For example, it prohibits the Pentagon from encouraging military personnel to wear abayas while in Saudi Arabia - even as it bans abortions in overseas military hospitals. Or consider missile defense. Donald Rumsfeld may have to endure a (gasp!) one-time review of the controversial program's work. But the fiscal 2003 Defense Authorization bill still includes $7.6 billion to play with. That's nearly five times more than is being spent to secure anthrax, sarin nerve gas, enriched uranium and other proliferation worries across the former Soviet Union - this for a highly hypothetical future system that, even if it did work as advertised, would be helpless before the al-Qaedas of the world. This is why missile defense is low on the to-do list of most Americans. Asked in October to choose between missile defense or a prescription drug benefit, 51 percent chose the drug benefit and only 25 percent the missile shield. Americans also chose spending on homeland security over missile defense by 57 percent to 15 percent, and military training and pay by 55 percent to 17 percent. The defense spending bill is also a slap in the face of some 500,000 disabled veterans. Such veterans are now barred from receiving both their military retirement pay and their veteran's disability benefits. A Senate amendment would have struck down this ban on "concurrent receipt." Instead, the defense bill was cunningly recrafted so that only certain veterans - those with 20-plus years of service and a Purple Heart - get help. Isaacs reported the compromise "left veterans' groups furious because only a small number of disabled veterans will benefit (about 33,000 out of 550,000)." So goes the last hurrah of the Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee. Democrats this year got to draft the spending bills, leaving the Republicans to pick and choose their fights. Next year, Republicans will draw up the legislative agenda -- and leave Democrats scrambling to respond. If billions for missile defense, crumbs for veterans and ambivalence about 'bunker-buster' nukes is the best the Democrats could offer this year, one shudders at what the Republican New Year might bring.

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (60632)	12/9/2002 4:01:12 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Karen Lawrence; Re: "public outcry" I don't think that there is much outcry against a war to eliminate Saddam. Maybe there is in your neighborhood, but almost half of my friends think it's a great idea, and none of the others are doing anything about it. The war party is now reduced to shrilly claiming that a failure to fight a war with Iraq would result in the destruction of America's prestige. This is not the standard argument of a group that is sure of getting what it wants, LOL, but is instead a circular argument for doing stupid things. The truth is that our prestige is doing just fine. None of the Arab nations are launching spacecraft, for example, or have multi-trillion dollar software companies revolutionizing the world. -- Carl