[Old Grumpy]

” . . . while this terrorist threat was growing and while they were declaring war on us, we were reducing the size of our military.”

A legacy from the Clinton co-presidency.

[Non-Sequitur]

A legacy from the Clinton co-presidency.

And a Republican Congress.

[blaquebyrd]

The drawdown began under Bush I — I was there.

[Alberta's Child]

” . . . while this terrorist threat was growing and while they were declaring war on us, we were reducing the size of our military.”

A legacy from the Clinton co-presidency.

He's completely full of crap here. I have never seen a single shred of evidence to suggest that a larger U.S. military would have done anything to ward off terrorist attacks against this country.

If anything, it's the exact opposite. Most of the morons in the Bush administration who ended up orchestrating the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had spent the latter half of the 1990s calling on the Clinton administration to invade Iraq as a response to every terrorist attack -- from the Khobar Towers to the USS Cole, etc. -- even though there was no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with those attacks.

9/11 didn't occur because the military was too small . . . it occurred because of malfeasance and incompetence at the highest levels of this country's government in BOTH the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations.