He's a great speaker. I'll give him that. He's also very believable. I guess any good lawyer would have to be since it's their job to lie to your face and make you believe it's the truth.
Anyway, why anyone in this country would vote for someone who wants to disarm the U.S. is beyond me. I know, let's put our dukes down first showing we are more mature than they are and hopefully they'll put their's down too.



Obama's Plan To Disarm The U.S.
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 6/6/2008

Defense Policy: In the middle of a war on two fronts, Barack Obama plans to gut the military. He also wants to dismantle our nuclear arsenal. And he wants to keep you in the dark about it.

The Obamatons of the mainstream media have failed to report one of the most chilling campaign promises thus far uttered by the presumptive Democrat nominee for president.

He made it before the Iowa caucus to a left-wing pacifist group that seeks to reallocate defense dollars to welfare programs. The lobbying group, Caucus for Priorities, was so impressed by Obama's anti-military offering that it steered its 10,000 devotees his way.

In a 132-word videotaped pledge (still viewable on YouTube), Obama agreed to hollow out the U.S. military by slashing both conventional and nuclear weapons.

The scope of his planned defense cuts, combined with his angry tone, is breathtaking. He sounds as if the military is the enemy, not the bad guys it's fighting. Here is a transcript:

"I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it.

"Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems.

"I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending.

"Third, I will set a goal for a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal."

You can bet that Obama will not make this sweeping indictment of our security forces again as he tries to move to the center in the general election. But this is what he thinks, and this is what he plans to do.

His campaign Web site doesn't list a separate category for military or defense under "Issues." But search shows near-identical language there regarding nuclear weapons.

His plan, needless to say, is frighteningly irresponsible given the world threats.

While there is fat in the defense budget, defense spending both as a share of GDP and the total federal budget are still at historically low levels, despite the war.

And while cutting fat out of the defense budget is a worthy goal, Obama would cut beyond fat to bone.

Caucus for Priorities aims to redirect 15% of the Pentagon's discretionary budget away from "obsolete Cold War weapons towards education, health care, job training, alternative energy development, world hunger and deficit-reduction."

On the chopping block: the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System.

Cutting allegedly "unproven" missile defense systems is music to Kim Jong Il's and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ears, let alone all the PLA generals wishing our destruction.

Yet Obama wants to kill a program that's yielding success after success, with both sea- and land-based systems. The military just this week intercepted a ballistic missile near Hawaii in a sea-based missile defense test.

Proposing "deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal" amounts to unilateral disarmament, and it's suicidal given China's and now Russia's aggressive military buildup.

Meanwhile, Iran and North Korea threaten nuclear madness, and Osama bin Laden dreams of unleashing a nuclear 9/11 on America.

In contrast, John McCain has vowed: "We must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies."

We've been down this road before. President Clinton pursued a denuclearization program, including his 1995 pledge to sign a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and it led to him kicking open our nuclear labs to the Chinese, who proceeded to steal our warhead secrets and strengthen their own arsenal.

Like the Ben & Jerry's crowd that supports him, Obama believes "real" national security is "humanitarian foreign aid" ? essentially using our troops as international meals-on-wheels in Africa.

We've been down that road before, too, in Somalia and elsewhere. Thanks, but we don't need a third Clinton, or a second Carter, term.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=297645696465868









thoughts?
not trying to start a flame war. just wanting other's opinions.

6/8/2008 3:00:47 PM

Quote :

"defense spending both as a share of GDP and the total federal budget are still at historically low levels, despite the war. "

i believe that spending for the war is outside of the defense budget and not counted in such statistics.

but yeah, if you look at all the numbers, relative to our ginormous economy, our military spending isn't that crazy.



and yeah, Obama is a far, far left candidate, and for some odd reason, largely defies that characterization, in my opinion.

6/8/2008 3:14:24 PM

not an odd reason to me...people like me are fed up with conservatives

6/8/2008 3:21:49 PM

that doesn't at all explain why Obama isn't getting characterized as being so far left.

[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 3:23 PM. Reason : and why are you fed up with conservatives, besides disagreement over the war?]

6/8/2008 3:22:41 PM

imo hes not being characterized as far left cause hes the "obvious" best choice this election

and i disagree that the incumbant party should win in 2008

[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 3:25 PM. Reason : if anything mccain is too fair right for me and like 50 percent of the country]

6/8/2008 3:24:51 PM

Quote :

"the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System."

if he honestly stops development in these systems i personally know friends who will lose jobs and we can kiss our victory over other countries technologies goodbye


ATTN: Iran/Russia/China/ or any other countries secretly wanting our demise. the military battlefield is going to be leveled out in a pair of years. feel free to begin development for future wars you where you will probably destroy us next time we fight

6/8/2008 3:34:41 PM

That video didn't really change my opinion much about anything - most of Obama's statements were not extreme.

The only sentence that I found intriguing was the statement about slowing the development of future weapon systems. Honestly I don't know what our budget is for future weapon systems, I imagine it is quite large, but whether it is beyond what we should be spending I don't know.

-----

The article, on the other hand, was fairly ridiculous as anything other than a partisan piece.

Nowhere does Obama talk about supporting Caucus for Priorities aims, other than "fighting special interests in Washington". The article makes it sound, however, that Obama is for chopping "the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, ..., and the Army's Future Combat System", which to the best of my knowledge is not true.

The "deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal" are supported by both candidates.

Statements like "using our troops as international meals-on-wheels" are just trolling puke.

6/8/2008 3:44:07 PM

if Obama wins... teach your children to fight... they may need to in the end

6/8/2008 3:51:34 PM

rofl

6/8/2008 3:57:03 PM

^^alarmism much?

6/8/2008 4:02:07 PM

I can't really say I'm against talking to the Russians about making it take more than 3 minutes to end human life. And if I remember right, we have enough nukes just on our side to cover the planet a few times over.

Isn't the Osprey proven to be not such a great idea? Underpowered, unarmed, slow? I've seen military webpages devoted to how bad it is (it can't carry a GUN for defense, too much weight).

6/8/2008 4:11:47 PM

instead of spending all this money to protect from people who want to destroy us, stop doing what is making them want to destroy us and have a peaceful world maybe? no way!th

[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 4:15 PM. Reason : THEY HATE ARR FREEDUM]

6/8/2008 4:14:53 PM

^ LOL, spoken like a true naif.

Wake the fuck up, you can't make everybody happy. There will be some people out there that hate us no matter what we do. It comes with the territory of being a superpower.

6/8/2008 4:23:24 PM

Wake the fuck up, you can't make everybody happy. There will be some people out there that hate us no matter what we do. It comes with the territory of being a superpower. white person

mccain 08 lol

6/8/2008 4:29:20 PM

Quote :

"relative to our ginormous economy, our military spending isn't that crazy."

Relative to our ginormous economy, our entitlement budget isn't that crazy.

6/8/2008 4:30:21 PM

good point dnl.

i think you're right. the more white people you have in your country, the more prosperous. also, the more white people, the more you are hated internationally.

lol. wow, i bet it could be mathematically proven too..

6/8/2008 4:45:27 PM

video is amazingly unimpressive.

Do you know how many times our military generals have pushed technology that made no sense or pushed campaigns that were outright nonsense? If we always listened to our top military leaders, we would have plowed straight through Japan into Russia at the end of WWII.

After reading some of the first post, the video was shockingly benign.

6/8/2008 4:47:24 PM

Quote :

"If we always listened to our top military leaders, we would have plowed straight through Japan into Russia at the end of WWII."

damn, the entire earth would be covered with democracy and prosperity by now. why didn't we???

the entire world would've been one big japan cover story of recovery. what did we quit for? russian winters don't stop b-29's last time i checked.


[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 4:50 PM. Reason : .]

6/8/2008 4:49:49 PM

Quote :

"If we always listened to our top military leaders, we would have plowed straight through Japan into Russia at the end of WWII."

Who supported that besides Patton? I thought that the rest of the military gave him a facepalm when he started talking about it.

For the record, I think that Obama would make a terrible president. He's a bigger socialist than FDR and clearly doesn't know dick about economics.

6/8/2008 5:17:27 PM

Quote :

"alarmism much?"

i said "may need to"... which isn't wrong by any stretch. the nations around the world that already hate our guts aren't going to just change their minds because we weaken ourselves. ideally, yes, that's exactly what we would like to have happen. like some of Obama's other issues, it's a pipe dream (see: universal healthcare)

6/8/2008 5:20:11 PM

If I were the dictator of China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Russia or Venezuela

i'd be pissing myself happy over such news.

6/8/2008 5:21:56 PM

We'll live.

[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 5:27 PM. Reason : ...]

6/8/2008 5:26:54 PM

Quote :

""I will institute an independent defense priorities board to ensure that the Quadrennial Review is not used to justify unnecessary defense spending."

How about an independent social spending priorities baord to ensure unnecessary social programs are prohibited?

6/8/2008 5:32:23 PM

FTR, i'm all in favor of cutting spending where it's useless and wasteful (i.e. they probably don't need umbrellas in every glass at some random washington cafeteria, it's not real that i know of, just an example). i don't like the idea of any drastic cutbacks on military research, especially defense research.

6/8/2008 6:08:08 PM

If I were the dictator of China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Russia or Venezuela

I would want the USA to keep getting itself into even more debt.

6/8/2008 6:20:25 PM

Gamecat for the win

6/8/2008 7:09:14 PM

BUT WHAT IF THEY ALL GANG UP ON US!?

Doesn't that budget seem paranoid?

Less than 5% of Earth's population requires almost half of its defensive resources to feel secure...

6/8/2008 7:41:58 PM

i think the original poster only read the article and never watched the video

i'm really not surprised that a paper that is all about big business and large corporations has an obviously biased piece criticizing obama

6/8/2008 7:50:35 PM

Actually we should just cut our military completely and make Europe cover our asses for a while.

[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 8:01 PM. Reason : [b]]

6/8/2008 8:00:54 PM

outlaw the production of fissile material? REALLY? and he wants to get us off oil, too? what a fucking retard

6/8/2008 8:26:58 PM

Quote :

" "the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System." if he honestly stops development in these systems i personally know friends who will lose jobs and we can kiss our victory over other countries"

The editorial's wording isn't clear, but Obama isn't aiming to end those programs.

The editorial is saying that Obama is going to cut the Pentagon's discretionary budget of 500-something billion by 15% . In the budget includes funding for those programs, but it's extremely unlikely that the Pentagon is going to decide to end those programs after the 15% cut.

6/8/2008 8:31:15 PM

Runaway military spending is an empire-killer. You'd think more American conservatives would understand this, but they love their toys too much.

6/8/2008 8:33:07 PM

^ Runaway <anything> spending is pretty bad.

6/8/2008 8:34:00 PM

spreading yourself thin is a much worse idea than disarming.

with that being said we shouldnt disarm but instead find a better way of utilizing what we have and planning for the future without blowing a load of cash.

6/8/2008 8:35:05 PM

Conservatives gloat over the defeat of the Soviets and then refuse to learn anything from their fall.

6/8/2008 8:39:13 PM

so, what didn't we learn again?

6/8/2008 8:43:01 PM

Quote :

"spreading yourself thin is a much worse idea than disarming. with that being said we shouldnt disarm but instead find a better way of utilizing what we have and planning for the future without blowing a load of cash."

This.

Warfare isn't so much conventional as economic. If you think the cold war was won on military might (or the threat thereof) then you're disregarding well over half of the equation.

6/8/2008 8:44:05 PM

yeh, we won it b/c we sat back like a bunch of democrats... lol

6/8/2008 8:46:11 PM

HEYOOOOOO

whats up man

also we did sit back. No one attached each other.

[Edited on June 8, 2008 at 8:46 PM. Reason : ~]

6/8/2008 8:46:14 PM

yeh b/c if would have just sat back not built any military they would have respected our right to exist. lol

6/8/2008 8:51:23 PM

Quote :

"yeh, we won it b/c we sat back like a bunch of democrats... lol"

In fact, what you'd call "nanny state" programs are partially what contributed to Soviet loss of morale and a loss of legitimacy for Soviet-styled socialism. It softened many of the gripes that the Soviet ideology had with capitalism -- in a way, it took away one of their major talking points. The combined strength of higher standards of living AND increased social justice in western capitalist states not only wrecked the morale of those Soviets that managed to travel abroad, but also managed to undermine their justifications for socialism in the first place.

In other words, capitalist states were willing to adjust and change in the face of economic crises (such as the OPEC oil-price hike in the 70s) whereas the Soviet system didn't change in any significant way since the 40s. They were still stuck in an era of revolution where the thing they revolted against had moved on and changed. Capitalism wasn't the same -- it was more regulated, and in a way that promoted more social justice (both in acquisition and transfer of holdings).

If anything, the cold war was lost by the Soviets more than it was won by "inherently better, unbridled capitalism" -- especially since it wasn't unbridled capitalism that "defeated" it, but carefully regulated capitalism. The Soviets couldn't maintain their level of military spending (about 20% of their GDP) and maintain such a huge land-empire. It was too hard to hold all of those states in line with a gradually encroaching West (encroaching and spreading mostly because of what I talked about above -- people saw an opportunity to increase their general wellbeing in a way that dodged the things they disliked about pure capitalism).

6/8/2008 8:53:50 PM

In other words, military equipment is expensive as hell, as is deploying and staffing it. One mistake Imperialist countries have made in the past is an unwillingness to pull back its military machine, resulting in spending it cannot maintain.

6/8/2008 8:57:55 PM

^ & ^^ win

6/9/2008 12:08:12 AM

win? maybe the barely related tangent award.
this i do agree with:

Quote :

"spreading yourself thin is a much worse idea than disarming. with that being said we shouldnt disarm but instead find a better way of utilizing what we have and planning for the future without blowing a load of cash."

6/9/2008 12:39:46 PM

Quote :

"On the chopping block: the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System."

That wording is vague.

But I certainly hope we don't buy as many F-22s as the Air Force is wanting.

And I certainly hope we don't ever go through a V-22 type boondoggle again.

And one would hope that the President would want to cut a program that's utterly failing at everything (FCS)

6/9/2008 12:57:37 PM

Quote :

""On the chopping block: the F-22 Raptor, the V-22 Osprey, the Virginia-class sub, the DDG-1,000 destroyer and the Army's Future Combat System.""

I don't know if Obama is really planning on cutting these programs and somehow I doubt Congress would let him. At least I hope so. Without the F-22 and the like we lose air superiority and then we may as well scrap the rest of our military as we will have lost our strategic advantage.

Quote :

"if anything mccain is too fair right for me and like 50 percent of the country"

You're an idiot if you think that. McCain is far closer to the middle of the political spectrum than Obama is. I would have to agree with theDuke866 in that Obama has somehow avoided being portrayed as far left as he actually is.

I would actually consider voting for a Democrat, if they would nominate someone who wasn't so far to the left (someone cut from the Bill Clinton mold perhaps), but it seems like each election the Democratic candidate gets more and more liberal. It's like they know the country is sick of Republicans in office, and somehow they see this as license to install the most liberal candidate they can find. If the Dems don't win in November, they have nobody to blame but themselves.



[Edited on June 9, 2008 at 1:26 PM. Reason : /rant]

6/9/2008 1:18:33 PM

^amen. we rule the world b/c of air superiority and space superiority aka communications. not # of troops.

cutting our air/space programs is like giving up our bread and butter

6/9/2008 1:21:38 PM

The numbers of f-22's the air force is trying to buy is ridiculous, though.

If I remember correctly, they actually butted heads with the Bush Administration of all people over the numbers to be purchased.

6/9/2008 1:27:35 PM

^ I haven't seen the numbers, but if I did, I would probably agree with you. That sort of thing is to be expected though. Each branch of the military, or the government for that matter, is always going to be asking for a bigger piece of the budget pie.

[Edited on June 9, 2008 at 1:30 PM. Reason : clarification]

6/9/2008 1:29:16 PM

Quote :

"By the time all 183 fighters have been purchased, $34 billion will have been spent on actual procurement, resulting in a total program cost of $62 billion or about $339 million per aircraft. The incremental cost for one additional F-22 is around $138 million;[4] decreasing with larger volumes. If the Air Force were to buy 100 more F-22s today, the cost of each one would be less and would continue to drop with additional aircraft purchases.[3] F-22A Raptors over Utah in their first official deployment, October 2005 The F-22 is not the most expensive aircraft aloft. That distinction likely belongs to the roughly $2.2 billion-per-unit B-2 Spirit, whose orders went from hundreds to a few dozen when the Cold War ended thus making the unit cost skyrocket, though the incremental cost was under US$1 billion. The F-22 uses fewer radar absorbent materials than the B-2 or F-117 Nighthawk, which is expected to translate into lower maintenance costs. On 31 July 2007, Lockheed Martin received a multiyear contract for 60 F-22s worth a total of US$7.3 billion.[9][13] The contract brings the number of F-22s on order to 183 and extends production through 2011.[9]"

[Edited on June 9, 2008 at 1:33 PM. Reason : .]

6/9/2008 1:31:02 PM