Quote Originally Posted by drJ:
the patriot act and all its impositions on our freedoms. this is my biggest issue.
the massive ramp up of our military at tremendous expense in so many ways.
bushs rubber stamping to every spending bill just so he could have the wars.
Not quite as "questionable" as you originally inferred.
1. There were sound reasons why the patriot act was passed, at the time. We thought that we were under serious attack by strong, determined enemies. Turned out not to be the case, but no one who signed off on this bill had fortune teller powers. So, now, after the fact you can complain about the patriot act. Okay, repeal it. The Democrats had a Democrat president and a Democrat Congress with an overwhelming majority and they did not repeal the patriot act, even though this would have been easy for them. So, do you hate Obama and the Democrats also?
2. "the massive ramp up of our military at tremendous expense in so many ways." I agree, sort of. We should not have stayed in Afghanistan after the end of December 2001. And Bush was a fool, or an idiot, or a traitor for allowing the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership escape at Tora Bora. The Army Rangers should have been sent in to Tora Bora and the leadership of the Taliban and al-Qaeda taken out and then we should have left Afghanistan with a stern warning given to the provincial governors "If you let the Taliban and al-Qaeda come back we will be back and we will make this little war look like a picnic put on by the camp fire girls".
We also should not have gone into Iraq. We had allies inside Iraq who would have taken Saddam out as long as they were given a guarantee of safety by the US. Yes, Saddam needed to be removed, but I think we could have done that with some means other than invasion.
The DoD budget, less the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was raised from $311 billion in 2000 to $494 billion in 2008. Today it stands at $549 billion, 2010 was $531 billion. I am wondering if you are as incensed at Obama for spending $549 billion on defense in 2011 as you were incensed at Bush for spending $494 billion on defense in 2008?
And are you incensed at Obama for "... rubber stamping to every spending bill just so he could have the wars". Because Obama is doing exactly the same thing, only spending more money than Bush spent.
I agree though, that our defense spending should be both reduced and what the money is being spent on could be modified. But, you cannot blame the President for this spending. Congress controls the defense budget. And many billions of dollars are put into the defense budget to give jobs to the states that the senators who control this budget are from. And most of these jobs are wasteful.
I will give you just one example. During WWII we had 7,000 people in the Department of the Navy disbursement office whose job it was to specify, order, and construct Navy ships. These 7,000 people built 88,000 ships in just shy of 4 years. That means that they each built 3 ships per year (3.14 to be exact). Today, the Navy has over 40,000 people in the disbursement office who build about 7 ships a year. Let's see, we went from 1 disbursement officer building 3 ships a year, to 5,700 disbursement officers building 1 ship a year. The defense budget is littered with this kind of insanity.
But what has any President every done about any of this? NOTHING.
There is a company that you have never heard of, called MITRE. I hate these idiots. Congress passed a law that requires the general staff of every military installation to contain MITRE people. They are supposed to be advanced level technical people whose job it is to give solid advice to the general staff on technology acquisitions, research, etc. And they are the most dishonest, incompetent, corrupt people I have ever encountered. And they cost $200,000 per person, per year. Every general officer I know wishes these corrupt idiots would just go away. But, Congress critters who control the budget process want these MITRE jobs in their states, so year after year they extend this mandate.
I could write volumes on how the US military budget could be slashed by at least 40% while increasing the efficiency of the US military, but unless we totally change how Congress functions, this will never happen.
For example, all the big accounting firms, such as Deloitte, get billions of dollars every year from the military for "research" and "consulting". And, they produce NOTHING useful. And if someone is at a base actually doing something useful who is not part of this budget process, and you won't be unless you are from one of these large companies, they do everything possible to subvert whatever it is that this outside person is doing.
Bush is not the reason that this corrupt system exists and the reason that we waste hundreds of billions of dollars on "military" expenditures, Congress is at fault for this. And Obama has done nothing to fix it. So, do you hate Obama as much as you hate Bush?