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

To: geode00 who wrote (217025)	2/8/2007 8:20:41 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Bush Defense Budget Comparable to World War II Budget spacewar.com On Monday, the Bush administration released details of its proposed military budget for 2008. According to Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, it is the biggest military spending request since 1946 -- the last year of budgeting for World War II. You'd think that would warrant splashy coverage in the national media, but in fact all of the major papers -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal -- consigned the story to the bottom of an inside page. Many of the key details about the budget were reported last week by Bloomberg Business News reporter Tony Capaccio, and the big papers seemed to treat the formal release of budget documents on Monday as a ho-hum affair. Page One was reserved for more important news, like the fact that it is cold outside. Which raises an interesting question. Is higher defense spending now so wired into popular expectations that the biggest defense budget in two generations isn't news? As Capaccio pointed out on Feb. 3, the proposed defense budget would represent the tenth consecutive year of real increases in military outlays since a post-cold-war lull in spending.

To: geode00 who wrote (217025)	2/8/2007 9:15:36 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

Which is why I'm so amazed that no one talks about WHY the US Military can't win in Iraq. Why? First, because the US military is being asked to accomplish a task that it's not trained or equipped to accomplish. Even the world's best hammer makes a very lousy screwdriver. Second, because wars are fought to achieve political objectives, and they are won when those objectives are achieved. The US military was asked to defeat Saddam's armed forces and remove him from power. Those are tasks appropriate to an armed force, and those tasks were achieved quickly and efficiently. The subsequent objective - establishing a functional and generally accepted government in Iraq - was not appropriate to an armed force, and may not have been achievable by any means available to the US. Naturally, it was not accomplished. The fault there lies with the people who selected an unachievable objective and pursued it with inappropriate tools, not with the tools that were used. If you try to use a hammer to drive a screw, you'll make a mess. Blaming the hammer for the mess is pretty pointless. Nothing there to be amazed about.