Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

New tactical aircraft requested in president's budget 399 52 58
New naval ships requested in president's budget 40 6 5
Got it, kids? The contrast could not be more stark. Bush-Cheney ordered 11 percent more tactical
aircraft than Clinton-Gore, but Clinton-Gore ordered 20 percent more ships than Bush-
Cheney.
Did you know that in 1986 we were still fighting the Cold War? In current dollars, we
spent $273 billion on defense in 1986 and $266 billion in 1996. Yes, that's 2 percent less, but
then again, the Soviet Union no longer existed. The Clinton budget in 1996 was larger than
the outgoing budget of the first Bush administration-a budget developed by then DOD Secretary
Dick Cheney.
During the 2000 campaign, it was the Republican ticket that ran against our military.
It was, according to Bush and Cheney, "hollowed out." Condoleezza Rice argued that Clinton
had undercut our troops' ability to fight by sending them into what the Bush team called "useless"
nation-building exercises. We were, George W Bush said, at our lowest state of readiness
since Pearl Harbor. I saw that movie, and let me tell you, our lack of preparedness
caused some serious problems—not just for Ben Affleck, but for josh Hartnett, as well.
Nine months after Bush took office, we went to war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The Soviets couldn't conquer Afghanistan. Neither could the British in 1919. But
somehow, we did it in a few weeks. With no new funding (the first Bush defense budget went
into effect on October 1, 2002), Donald Rumsfeld had taken our "gutted" military and, with a
little string and some baling wire, turned it into the greatest fighting force in the history of the
planet.
The man is a fucking genius.
Or maybe Afghanistan (and then Iraq) was payoff for the "revolution in military affairs"
in which Clinton invested so heavily. Take this scenario described by Fred Kaplan of
the Boston Globe:
A U.S. Special Forces soldier, sitting on horseback, spots a Taliban target. He types out the
information on his laptop computer and transmits the data to a Predator, a new unmanned
drone flying 25,000 feet overhead. The Predator relays the data to commanders in Saudi Arabia,
who direct the drone to the target for a closer look—and take a look themselves through
its real-time video transmission.