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

To: combjelly who wrote (331337)	4/2/2007 1:02:53 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1585199

CJ, > Yet another desperate attempt to blame Clinton for Bush's failings. This wouldn't have been an issue had the Dems not brought it up, especially in 2004. Remember, the Dems are trying to portray themselves as supporters of our troops, opposers of the war. Tenchusatsu

To: combjelly who wrote (331337)	4/11/2007 1:53:17 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1585199

Its not blaming Clinton for Bush's failings, as much as it is pointing out that it isn't really a failing. We have far fewer troops to equip than we had in WWII with a far smaller economic base. Now true, in WWII, the troops weren't as well equipped as they are today. Exactly. They are better equiped today than ever before. And that probably holds true even if you don't consider technological advancement. They are better equipped today compared to the enemy they are fighting, or compared to other countries, then out soldiers where in WWII. The equipment we had in WWII was sometimes inferior by WWII standards (compare a Sherman to the best German or Russian tanks of WWII), and sometimes out soldiers failed to get the equipment they where supposed to get (far more often then they do now). But as a percentage of GNP, the cost to equip an individual soldier is likely far less. I'm not sure this is one area where percentage of GDP really matters, but you might be right. At least if you are talking about the equipment carried by an average infantry private. If you include the total resources used to support the private, you wouldn't be right. Out real GDP is something like a dozen times what it was in WWII, and we probably don't spend (at least in real terms) a dozen times as much on the rifle, ammo, food, and personal equipment a soldier carries. But include the training, transportation, indirect fire support etc. and we probably do spend more a a percentage of GDP on each soldier. I could try to calculate it but I'm not sure its worth the effort. And we had 7.7 million of them in WWII as compared to ~170k now. We have far more than 170 thousand people in the military today. The army has about 500k, the total for all branches is about 1.4 mil (against about 12 million in WWII) True a larger percentage of the 7.7 million in WWII was in combat zones, but not 100%.