[pissant]

Hunter has been fighting to increase the size of the military since nonsense of the "peace dividend" started under Bush I and accelerated under Clinton. This is our future CIC, folks.

[pissant]

Always ahead of the curve PING.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Please provide a link.

[Tarpon]

Hunter is a good one ... we need more fighters an fewer wimps.

[Wiseghy]

At this point, I’d say the military will quietly welcome this. If there is emerging common ground with Dems, it was in this area. Small armies worked in the Afgan theator, but not in Iraq. Perhaps we went in too heavy there too, and with too many objectives.

I note that Tausher, a Bay Area Dem who is on this committee, was pushing hard for the troop increase last year and the previous year. I’d be curious to know what her position is now, now that the caucus has changed and they are in the majority.

[Enchante]

"since nonsense of the "peace dividend" started under Bush I and accelerated under Clinton"

That whole "peace dividend" b.s. has been a nightmare -- sure, some very modest reduction/re-allocations might have been appropriate in the early '90s, but to go down to only 10 Army divisions (not to mention the myriad other cuts that were made) was just foolish. I would think we should be adding a lot more than 30,000 more active duty Army, but I don't claim to be an expert!

[Fledermaus]

We need to seriously increase our defense spending to more than 5% of GDP.

[Non-Sequitur]

Rumsfeld has argued that the military does not need a permanent troop increase because the current high level of demand is "a spike."

And what made Rumsfeld think that there wouldn't be more spikes? Or higher spikes? The time to start increasing the size of the military was back in 2001 or 2002. Waiting this long will make it harder and more expensive.

[TADSLOS]

It’s a good start.