Posted by
King Vinyl on Thursday, June 18, 2009 8:37:31 PM
The silver lining is the facts not so long ago Democrats would sell out our troops for political gain by trivialising the effort. Now $80 billion; not far off of the annual "war on terror" budget spent by president Bush since 9/11/2001.
The sad part is that Bush gets blamed for focusing on Iraq and still we have no clear exit strategy. The Democrats said they would pull our troops out immediatly and questioned Bush's intent or if he ever intended to end the Iraqi engagement, so it's a fair point. Democrats railed about these "failed" efforts as they threatened to cut off funding, while only the brave minority in the GOP stood fast against their lies.
Now we must stay the course with those who mis-under-estimated as they call the shots during a financial crisis. Some other wishlist items and special interests items add another $26 billion as a sort of ransom in the deal.
Today Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced he was sending missle defense systems to Hawaii as a clear sign that a long range North Korean nuclear strike on the US mainland is no longer out of the question. These would or wouldn't be the same missle defense programs Obama wants cut? Wasn't the world supposed to love Obama?
We are days from Joe Bidens six month prediction timetable. Obama is sliding in polls despite propaganda efforts designed to polish his image. The Chinese, the Russians, and now the Iranians see the US as being weakened by Obama's inexperiance in foreign affairs. North Korea may see itself at a financial advantage if reports are correct and they have continued printing US Treasury Bonds.
It would only take one attack on the US to turn the tide against all efforts of the Obama administration to shrink our defense spending annually. Clinton left office after years of cuts with 9/11 as a result. So with only the self assurance that China will continue to buy our debt we may find ourselves unable to rebuild our defenses.