Army officials fear more cuts

THE WASHINGTON TIMES ^ | June 4, 2002 | By Rowan Scarborough

[vannrox]

Army officials believe they are in the cross hairs of Pentagon civilian policy-makers who want a smaller land force.

Officers say they fear Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's cancellation of the Crusader howitzer last month is only the first round in shrinking the Army to meet 21st-century threats.

[vannrox]

Hum, where is all the money going?

[fogarty]

The money (including the billions supposedly 'saved' by cancelling Crusader) is going right into the coffers of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing - into high-tech space assets, R & D programs and lots of fancy gizmos....but precious little money for the tip of the spear and ammunition and training of our frontline troops.

[Cicero]

Maybe they could save some money if they weeded out all the sensitivity trainers, sexual harrassment officials, and co-ed basic training advocates.

[caltrop]

I don't know where they're planning on sending it but right now it's being thrown away in Europe. The Bosnian operation was supposed to cost $1.5 billion the first (and only) year we were going to be involved. At the ten month mark it had already passed $4 billion. The senior leadership, however, kept building with the intention of being there forever.

Our Army in Europe should be brought home. They have no mission, can't get out of their own way and, when it came time to send tanks south to Kosovo, they didn't know the tunnels in Switzerland were too small to ship our tanks through. After only 50 years in Europe it is comforting to know they finally did wake up to this little matter but what on earth were they doing the other 49?

[bybybill]

We failed? Are you nuts? In 8 months our troops and our allies went half way around the world, defeated Taleban, wiped out ben Losingalot`s boys, and help establish a new government. You call that losing? Ask the Russians if we won.

[Paul Ross]

BUMP!

In every single case where we 'drove off' the Taliban or Al Quaeda what we were really witnessing was a DEFEAT of the objective of DESTROYING BIN LADEN and his top lieutenants. They were constantly escaping at will...BECAUSE WE HAD NO TROOPS in a position to surround them, cut off their escape avenues, and annhilate them if encountered. It was a fairly simple job, and frankly if they had just sent enough troops in, maybe it would be done now. Maybe THAT is the real point here. They didn't want this done too soon. Now we are getting sucked into guerrilla warfare without the flexibility to respond...