The Clinton military budget cuts myth

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-02-28 11:07am

Clinton not only did not accelerate the cuts proposed by the first Bush administration, he actually spent $2 billion more on defense than Bush Senior had projected for the 1994-1999 time frame.

More importantly, the military that the current President Bush and his national-security team have correctly praised for performing so brilliantly on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq was bequeathed to them by Clinton. The Bush defense budget went into effect Oct. 1, 2002, nine months after major fighting ended in Afghanistan and only five months before actual combat began in Iraq. None of the funds in this budget has had time to have any impact on the caliber of the men and women who went to war, their readiness for battle or the weapons they used.

Based on the rhetoric of the Bush team and the 2000 campaign, one would not have believed that the Clinton military could overthrow two regimes with fewer battlefield casualties than the Marines suffered in Lebanon in 1983.

(Lawrence Korb, Assistant SecDef in the Reagan Administration, 1981-85)

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-02-28 11:52am

So Clinton didn't cut the military as much as Bush Senior would have. Wow, I guess that means the cuts he made were A-Okay!

He was still the one that made the cuts and bears the responsibility for them and their consequences.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-02-28 11:55am

So Clinton didn't cut the military as much as Bush Senior would have. Wow, I guess that means the cuts he made were A-Okay!

Did you even read the fucking article, Stormbringer? It's about sensible military budgets and national security strategy, and makes the argument that whatever the problems of the military, the (fucking obsene) amount of money it recieves is not the issue. Furthermore, the myth to which I refer is that Clinton went above and beyond Bush's military spending cuts, so this comment is entirely irrelevant.

Stormbringer wrote:
He was still the one that made the cuts and bears the responsibility for them and their consequences.

Yes, we've all seen the shocking consequences of those ghastly cuts; the recent humiliations on the battlefield, the low morale, the dearth of new weapons, you know ... Jesus, you make it sound like the Iraqi Army.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-02-28 12:03pm

Vympel wrote:Did you even read the fucking article, Stormbringer?

"The Clinton military budget cuts myth"

And the first part of your quote was a rationalization of the cuts as being less than Bush Sr's proposals. If that's irrelevant why post it?

Vympel wrote:
Stormbringer wrote:
He was still the one that made the cuts and bears the responsibility for them and their consequences.
Yes, we've all seen the shocking consequences of those ghastly cuts; the recent humiliations on the battlefield, the low morale, the dearth of new weapons, you know ...

Just get to what ever point you've got? Because I'm not seeing any at all. No one but a crackpot has claimed Clinton has neutered the military, just sorely neglected things.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-02-28 12:05pm

Stormbringer wrote:
And the first part of your quote was a rationalization of the cuts as being less than Bush Sr's proposals. If that's irrelevant why post it?

Above post since edited (seconds before you posted). Read again.

Just get to what ever point you've got? Because I'm not seeing any at all. No one but a crackpot has claimed Clinton has neutered the military, just sorely neglected things.

Sorely neglected things like what, and how "sorely neglected" could they possibly have been, hmm?

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-02-28 12:07pm

Here's Oliver North, 1999, Stormbringer

"More than 600 U.S. combat aircraft are now engaged in this undeclared war and over 30,000 reservists have been alerted for active duty because six years of Clinton's military cuts have gutted the U.S. armed forces."

Noone ever claimed he neutered the military huh?

I could dig up more, but I was sure you knew that Clinton 'gutted' the US military is an article of faith among hte right wing.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2004-02-28 12:16pm

Vympel wrote:
So Clinton didn't cut the military as much as Bush Senior would have. Wow, I guess that means the cuts he made were A-Okay!
Did you even read the fucking article, Stormbringer? It's about sensible military budgets and national security strategy, and makes the argument that whatever the problems of the military, the (fucking obsene) amount of money it recieves is not the issue.

I agree. But exactly how is it that related to any Clinton budget myths?

Vympel wrote:Furthermore, the myth to which I refer is that Clinton went above and beyond Bush's military spending cuts, so this comment is entirely irrelevant.

It is irrelevant. Which is why I'm wondering why the hell you bothered quoting it.

Vympel wrote:Sorely neglected things like what, and how "sorely neglected" could they possibly have been, hmm?

Things like discarding newly upgraded (and fairly useful) aircraft.

Allegations that missed maintainence on our conventional carriers as the cause of deployment problems.

And of course the fact that he didn't replace smart bombs and cruise missles expended in Bosnia and other places.

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-02-28 12:21pm

I agree. But exactly how is it that related to any Clinton budget myths?

*sigh* The myth that Bush Snr. would've been any better.

It is irrelevant. Which is why I'm wondering why the hell you bothered quoting it.

What I was wondering is why you said it in the first place.

Things like discarding newly upgraded (and fairly useful) aircraft.

Can you point to any need for aviation assets in recent campaigns? I can't. There's a difference between "this aircraft is cool, *proceed to bitch about it's demise*" and "we *need* this aircraft".

Allegations that missed maintainence on our conventional carriers as the cause of deployment problems.

What deployment problems?

And of course the fact that he didn't replace smart bombs and cruise missles expended in Bosnia and other places.

??? Considering that Bush was playing with Clinton's budget until October 2002, I fail to see how this is anything but another myth.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-28 12:32pm

Forget it, Vympel. Stormbringer's mouth is so firmly planted upon Republican cock that you'd need a crowbar to pry him off.

He completely ignored the fact that the Iraqi victory was won without any help whatsoever from either Bush Sr. or Bush Jr., and tried to rebut the article without even bothering to read it. There's no point even trying to argue in the face of such knee-jerking.

Worlds Spanner · Post by **Worlds Spanner** » 2004-02-28 01:12pm

Vympel wrote:Here's Oliver North, 1999, Stormbringer

"More than 600 U.S. combat aircraft are now engaged in this undeclared war and over 30,000 reservists have been alerted for active duty because six years of Clinton's military cuts have gutted the U.S. armed forces."

Noone ever claimed he neutered the military huh? I could dig up more, but I was sure you knew that Clinton 'gutted' the US military is an article of faith among hte right wing.

Oliver North??? Can you come up with a better example than Oliver North?

Oddysseus · Post by **Oddysseus** » 2004-02-28 04:58pm

Darth Wong wrote:Forget it, Vympel. Stormbringer's mouth is so firmly planted upon Republican cock that you'd need a crowbar to pry him off.

He completely ignored the fact that the Iraqi victory was won without any help whatsoever from either Bush Sr. or Bush Jr., and tried to rebut the article without even bothering to read it. There's no point even trying to argue in the face of such knee-jerking.

It is the ironic truth. Bush and Cheney tag teamed against the military throughout their campaing. Bemoaned the poor maintenance. Cried out that 2 whole divisions were unready, despite the fact the military disagreed (what do they know

). Then once in office, before we knew it, they were able to field and use the dilapadated dinosaur in winning 2 wars. They must be geniouses. Oh wait. Clinton maybe Clinton just did his job, inspite of Republican distrations. Wasn't it Cheney who as Secretary of the Defense graciously credited the victory of teh first Gulf War to Reagan? Saying any admin can only use and deal with the army that the last admin worked on and made, as it takes so long to change things. Funny, huh? When its the demmy's htat credit is due towards it is sure fleeting.

It was under CLinton that network centric warfare came to rise. As to the smart bombs, we seemed to have an awful lot in the Iraqi war, who made them? Could it have been during Clinton's admin? Even people from the Reagan admin (Lawerence J. Corb - senior adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan admin) acknowledged Clinton's accomplishments.

And I loved Paul Wolfowitz response when Al Franken brought up the Clinton military's victory in Iraq.

Under Clinton we no longer needed the same military that we had in the 80's under Reagan. With no great Soviet threat, things needed to change, and did. When are Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield going to thank Clinton and his people for that hard work?

Oddysseus · Post by **Oddysseus** » 2004-02-28 05:02pm

Worlds Spanner wrote:
Vympel wrote:Here's Oliver North, 1999, Stormbringer

"More than 600 U.S. combat aircraft are now engaged in this undeclared war and over 30,000 reservists have been alerted for active duty because six years of Clinton's military cuts have gutted the U.S. armed forces."

Noone ever claimed he neutered the military huh? I could dig up more, but I was sure you knew that Clinton 'gutted' the US military is an article of faith among hte right wing.
Oliver North??? Can you come up with a better example than Oliver North?

Isn't Ollie still the Republican banner boy? He was pretty popular for a long while, and he sure seemed to speak for people. Then theirs Sean Hannity and Clinton loathed the military schpeel. Granted I don't beleive jack these guys say. But they have a large audience that eats it up.

Illuminatus Primus · Post by **Illuminatus Primus** » 2004-02-28 05:09pm

Skimmer knows more about this, but regardless of what Clinton did right, and what Bush the Elder would've done, we did have to spend months buying up rifle ammunition across the globe just for the Iraq operation. Not to mention the slashing of the maintainence budget for the USN which, soaked up by our conventional CVs, reduced them nearly to wrecks. I believe Clinton also slashed a couple infantry divisions G.H.W. Bush would've kept. And then there's using the Intruders being turned into reefs after being refitted.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-28 06:17pm

Yeah, I heard the bit about the warstocks before. Although the rapidity with which they could be built back up when needed does refute the idea that they constituted a serious crippling of the military does it not? Excessive inventory is not an efficient use of resources.

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2004-02-28 07:36pm

Excessive inventory is not an efficient use of resources.

The problem is the defintion of "Excessive Inventory" 's defintion changes on a day by day basies, For example the diffrence in say... Tomahawk Cruise Missles changes on a damn near day to day basies, The amount of missiles you need for training and costal patrol verses the amount of missles you need to take out a country like Iraq or another Yugoslavia verses the amount needed if Red China decided to invade formaly red Russia is normaly the square of the square of the previous level

And normaly we only maintain about enough ammo for one Iraq and expect to have ten to twenty years to build stocks back up before the next conflict/war according to the info I've seen while in serivce

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2004-02-28 07:38pm

Darth Wong wrote:Yeah, I heard the bit about the warstocks before. Although the rapidity with which they could be built back up when needed does refute the idea that they constituted a serious crippling of the military does it not? Excessive inventory is not an efficient use of resources.

You're forgetting that it took months to replace those stocks. I would hardly call that rapid, and it's time you might not have in case of an unexpected crisis. The Iraq war was not unexpected. Everyone saw it coming nearly half a year in advance, and the US military had that much time to prepare. I wonder how well they would have fared if they were asked to go into a conflict that size without any prior warning?
IMHO, the US military should maintain enough ammunition in reserve to last them about a month in a Gulf War I-sized conflict.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2004-02-28 07:46pm

Illuminatus Primus wrote:Skimmer knows more about this, but regardless of what Clinton did right, and what Bush the Elder would've done, we did have to spend months buying up rifle ammunition across the globe just for the Iraq operation. Not to mention the slashing of the maintainence budget for the USN which, soaked up by our conventional CVs, reduced them nearly to wrecks. I believe Clinton also slashed a couple infantry divisions G.H.W. Bush would've kept. And then there's using the Intruders being turned into reefs after being refitted.

Much as I like the Intruders, they were excess of requirements. We haven't needed an old-fashioned bomb truck in quite some time, partly because ships are now capable of performing highly accurate long-range bombardment with TLAM and LASM. If they hadn't been reefed, they probably would have ended up sitting in the boneyards until they were no longer useable, then cut up for scrap.

RadiO · Post by **RadiO** » 2004-02-28 08:57pm

The retirement of the Intruder meant that the USN lost its long-range strike aircraft.
The Tomcat filled that gap (just) but once it's retired the USN loses a capability which isn't going to come back until the JSF enters service. That's If it enters service.
And they lost the KA-6D at the same time. Damn.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-28 09:06pm

Ma Deuce wrote:You're forgetting that it took months to replace those stocks.

No, I'm not forgetting that. But does it not take a similar amount of time to move the necessary forces into the theatre anyway?

I would hardly call that rapid, and it's time you might not have in case of an unexpected crisis. The Iraq war was not unexpected. Everyone saw it coming nearly half a year in advance, and the US military had that much time to prepare. I wonder how well they would have fared if they were asked to go into a conflict that size without any prior warning?

And what would cause such need? A conventional attack on the Continental US? Of all the conflicts the US has gotten into over the last 50 years, how many involved such abrupt, sudden, unexpected need?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-28 09:23pm

Iceberg wrote:Much as I like the Intruders, they were excess of requirements. We haven't needed an old-fashioned bomb truck in quite some time, partly because ships are now capable of performing highly accurate long-range bombardment with TLAM and LASM. If they hadn't been reefed, they probably would have ended up sitting in the boneyards until they were no longer useable, then cut up for scrap.

LASM was killed, mainly because all those old SM1s are in demand for other navies and TLAM is rather expensive for the saturation bomabardment role. A bomb truck like the Intruder would have been quite useful (if not totally neccessary) in the sort of conflicts like Afghanistan. The loss of the KA-6D and the planned phaseout of the EA-6B are more serious.

The cuts in the maintenance budget were the most severe problem with the Clinton-era military, not the drawdown in forces (of which GHWB proposed even deeper cuts, IIRC).

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-28 09:31pm

Oddysseus wrote:It was under CLinton that network centric warfare came to rise. As to the smart bombs, we seemed to have an awful lot in the Iraqi war, who made them? Could it have been during Clinton's admin? Even people from the Reagan admin (Lawerence J. Corb - senior adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan admin) acknowledged Clinton's accomplishments.

IIRC, the research into network-centric warfare began long before Clinton (such as the proposed "Assault Breaker" in the 1980s) and was simply carried over and reached fruition in Clinton's administration (somewhat similar how some of the research projects under Carter's administration were implemented by Reagan).

The smart bomb inventory for OIF was produced in GWB's term; much of the Clinton-era arsenal, IIRC, was expended in Afghanistan.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-02-28 09:42pm

Darth Wong wrote:And what would cause such need? A conventional attack on the Continental US? Of all the conflicts the US has gotten into over the last 50 years, how many involved such abrupt, sudden, unexpected need?

If there was a need to deploy rapidly for some reason, the forces already out there might be somewhat short on ammunition while the munitions plants on CONUS spool up. Not every conflict will be like Iraq where we have months of time to assemble forces in theatre and build up large supply depots. In addition, things like cruise missiles or even JDAM or LGB conversion kits take quite a bit longer to produce than basic things like rifle or pistol ammunition.

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2004-02-28 09:47pm

Darth Wong wrote:
Ma Deuce wrote:You're forgetting that it took months to replace those stocks.
No, I'm not forgetting that. But does it not take a similar amount of time to move the necessary forces into the theatre anyway?

Conceded, but I was not just referring to US Army stocks.
IIRC, back in 1999, when the US Navy was bombarding Serbia with TLAMs, they were actually in danger of running out of missiles (I mean the Navy's entire stock of Tomahawks)...

I would hardly call that rapid, and it's time you might not have in case of an unexpected crisis. The Iraq war was not unexpected. Everyone saw it coming nearly half a year in advance, and the US military had that much time to prepare. I wonder how well they would have fared if they were asked to go into a conflict that size without any prior warning?
And what would cause such need? A conventional attack on the Continental US? Of all the conflicts the US has gotten into over the last 50 years, how many involved such abrupt, sudden, unexpected need?

On August 1, 1990, how many people honestly believed that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait the next day (or ever)? Of course there was still 6 more months before Desert Storm actually began, but that's beside the point.
Even in this day and age, bad things can still happen unexpectedly, and just because the US military had lots of time to prepare in many of the conflicts it has seen in the past does not mean we can expect that to be the case in every single future scenario.

Besides, if a military action is in the works, you're going to have to buy the extra ammo anyway. I would think it would be wiser not to have to shell out lots of money for ammunition at the same time you're shelling out lots of money for troop/equipment movement.
However, I'll admit I'm not certain what the shelf life and maintenence costs of most types of munitions are (especially sophisticated ones like LGBs, TLAMs or JDAMs)...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-02-28 09:59pm

Ma Deuce wrote:IIRC, back in 1999, when the US Navy was bombarding Serbia with TLAMs, they were actually in danger of running out of missiles (I mean the Navy's entire stock of Tomahawks)...

And there was a crippling need to bombard Serbia with TLAMs? It was a national security issue that they could not do so indefinitely?

On August 1, 1990, how many people honestly believed that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait the next day (or ever)? Of course there was still 6 more months before Desert Storm actually began, but that's beside the point.

I don't see how it's beside the point. In that example, it took so long to deploy heavy forces to a remote theatre that the time spent to ramp up ammo production (ammo being much easier to airlift than MBTs) would not have been an issue.

Even in this day and age, bad things can still happen unexpectedly, and just because the US military had lots of time to prepare in many of the conflicts it has seen in the past does not mean we can expect that to be the case in every single future scenario.

I'm still waiting for a hypothetical yet realistic scenario in which the US Army needs large stockpiles of ammo on hand with no delay.

Besides, if a military action is in the works, you're going to have to buy the extra ammo anyway. I would think it would be wiser not to have to shell out lots of money for ammunition at the same time you're shelling out lots of money for troop/equipment movement.

Why not? It's not as if the government will go insolvent due to the costs of ammo production.

However, I'll admit I'm not certain what the shelf life and maintenence costs of most types of munitions are (especially sophisticated ones like LGBs, TLAMs or JDAMs)...

Nor am I. I'm sure Skimmer knows more.

PainRack · Post by **PainRack** » 2004-02-28 10:04pm

Ma Deuce wrote: You're forgetting that it took months to replace those stocks. I would hardly call that rapid, and it's time you might not have in case of an unexpected crisis. The Iraq war was not unexpected. Everyone saw it coming nearly half a year in advance, and the US military had that much time to prepare. I wonder how well they would have fared if they were asked to go into a conflict that size without any prior warning?
IMHO, the US military should maintain enough ammunition in reserve to last them about a month in a Gulf War I-sized conflict.

Can we do this relative wise?

What other nation in the world would had been capable of deploying to battle in a moment notice fully operationally ready, with full stocks of spare parts and ammunition?