Obama Navy chief fires back at GOP

Politico ^ | 8/31/15 | Philip Ewing

[Nachum]

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants to torpedo all the talk about a shrinking U.S. battle fleet.

Republican presidential candidates are pushing a “narrative,” Mabus said, that President Barack Obama has weakened the military and, in particular, the Navy, at a time of growing demands on American power around the world. But in an interview with POLITICO, Mabus fired a salvo at critics he said don’t know what they’re talking about.

“I have this funny thing about facts,” he laughed in his office on the Pentagon’s E-Ring, surrounded by paintings of classic warships. “I like to get facts into the equation.”

Numbers aren’t the only way to measure seapower, Mabus said — a point Obama famously made to Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential debate. But even a simple count of the number of ships in service today — and, Mabus stressed, under contract — reveals that the Navy is growing, not shrinking.

The Navy has ordered some 70 ships since Mabus came to Washington in 2009, which, accounting for retirements of ships in the coming years, puts the fleet on track to grow to more than 300 and, if Congress cooperates, potentially far beyond that.

If all goes as hoped, the Navy will stabilize at a fleet of 308, Mabus said: “That’s the number of ships we need to do every mission we’ve got.”

[Mr Apple]

Wesley Clark does

I'd imagine Clark smells like a petunia.