Obama’s defense policies: bad for the military, bad for Ohio

Previous articles on this website have focused on the Navy, and in particular, that Service’s decline and its implications for Virginia and Florida. I have also explained why Mitt Romney is right that the Navy needs more ships, and why Barack Obama was wrong to dismiss the Navy’s needs and to compare its warships to horses and bayonets, as if the former were relics of a bygone era. Today I will explain why President Obama’s decisions are harmful for the Army as well – and bad for the state of Ohio.

The Buckeye State’s importance needs no explanation. It has 18 EC votes and thus holds the key to the White House. With 38 states firmly entrenching behind party lines, with few swing states in play, Ohio alone can elect the next President of the United States. If Ohio voters make an informed decision, I’m sure they will make the right decision. And this article is designed to help them make an informed one.

Barack Obama came into office explicitly promising deep defense cuts to his liberal supporters. And he has delivered. Now he plans to make even further defense cuts, which, even in the absence of sequestration, would include closing the Lima Tank Plant – the only facility in the entire United States today capable of producing tanks. This will mean that:

• Its workers will be laid off and will have to find new jobs;
• No more Abrams tanks will be produced or modified; and
• The Tank Plant will be closed at a fiscal cost of over $300 mn, only to reopen it in 2017 (to produce Ground Combat Vehicles) at an even greater cost of $1.3 bn, a total of $1.6 bn – more than what it would cost to keep the Tank Plant open through 2017, when GCVs are supposed to go into production.

His administration claims that this decision will produce savings, but as Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute points out, savings will materialize only in the short term, in FY2013 and FY2014. In the long term, if you count the cost of reopening the Tank Plant in 2017 and of retraining workers (who will have to find other jobs in the meantime, for a full four years), the Obama administration’s decision will actually cost taxpayers more than what it would cost to keep the tank plant open – and it will cost the Plant’s employees their jobs. They’ll have to find work elsewhere for 4 years.

If they’re laid off and do find new jobs, they’re unlikely to return to the tank/GCV-building business, so the loss of the skilled workforce could be permanent.

Barack Obama’s policies are harming the military in other ways – if indirectly. For example, he’s been leading a crusade against coal as a source of energy to appease his radical environmentalist supporters (who are a large source of campaign cash for him; he killed the Keystone Pipeline for the same reason, by the way). He wants to penalize coal and the electric plants that utilize it financially, through government policies (e.g. taxes), so that coal-fired electric plants will “bankrupt” (his word, not mine). He has OPENLY stated he wants to bankrupt the owners of these electric plants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TGUJD8ReRk

And if they go bankrupt, so will the coal mines that provide them with coal, and their miners.

Yet coal is the cheapest and most abundant source of energy in the US by far (the US has enough coal for 250 years). For that reason, it’s important not only for energy security (and thus for America’s overall national security) and for Ohio and the nation’s families struggling with utility bills, but also, potentially, for the military. Coal can be converted into liquid fuels – including both ground vehicle and jet fuel – at a low cost through the Fischer-Tropsch method (invented in the 1920s by two German scientists wishing to utilize Germany’s huge coal reserves).

Coal can thus be turned, at minimum cost, for the military’s fuel-thirsty vehicles as well as for military aircraft – at a much lower cost than the hyper-expensive “green” jet fuels that Obama and his incompetent Navy Secretary Ray Mabus have been touting (which cost $24/gallon).

Coal can, of course, also be turned into regular gasoline, and thus power the cars of ordinary Americans. If the Fischer-Tropsch process were to be utilized on a mass scale, liquified coal fuel could replace oil and bring gasoline prices down significantly. Ohioans don’t have to settle for $4/gallon gas.

And America would finally become energy independent, no longer reliant on oil supplies from unstable Middle Eastern countries and on supplies travelling through a Strait of Hormuz that the Iranians could close anytime. (Did I hear someone say, “We need a stronger Navy!”)

Ohio thus has crucial national security assets – the only tank plant in the country and huge reserves of coal that could be used to power military and civilian vehicles alike – and 18 Electoral College votes. I hope the good people of Ohio make the right decision this November 6th.

Folks, please send this blogpost to everyone you know, including every Ohioan you know.

Rebuttal of Obama’s blatant debate lies

During the third presidential debate, Barack Obama stated a lot of blatant lies to cover up his sordid foreign policy record. Here’s a rebuttal of some of them:

1) He claims that ship numbers don’t matter because today’s ships are more capable and because the Navy has carriers and submarines today. But during the Reagan years (when the Navy was more than twice as big as it is today), the USN had far more carriers and submarines than today, and the Pacific Fleet alone was larger than the USN is today. Even during the Clinton years the Navy had more ships than today.

Furthermore, and most importantly, ship numbers matter a great deal, because a single ship, no matter how capable, can only be in one place at any given time. Yet, today’s Navy only has 284 ships, not even close to enough to meet even today’s requirements: the Navy today can meet only 59% of Combatant Commanders’s needs for ships and only 61% of their needs for submarines.

And earlier this year, when CENTCOM commander Gen. James Mattis requested a third carrier group to be deployed to the Gulf, he was refused, because all other available carriers were needed in the Pacific.

Moreover, as two independent studies – one by the bipartisan QDR Independent Review Panel and another one by the CNAS – have found – the Navy needs 346 ships to execute all of its missions, not the meagre 284 it has today.

Furthermore, under Obama’s own plans, even if sequestration does not proceed, the USN’s cruiser, destroyer, and submarine fleets will decline precipitously below today’s already-inadequate levels, as documented by Ronald O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service. Moreover, comparing ships to “bayonets and horses” and thus implying that warships are relics of the past is not just wrong, it’s demeaning for the Navy. So Mitt Romney is right: the Navy DOES need a lot more ships than it has today.

2) He claims that when he sits down with the Joint Chiefs, he gives them what is needed to protect America. This is utterly false. Obama has only weakened the military, and significantly so. He has cut the defense budget significantly, killed over 50 crucial weapon programs, and used the defense budget as a piggybank for his domestic pet projects. In 2009, Obama ordered the DOD to kill over 30 crucial weapon programs, including the F-22, the Zumwalt class, the AC-X, the CSAR helicopter, the MKV, the KEI, and many others. In 2010, he signed, and rammed through a lame-duck Senate, the unequal New START treaty, which obligates only the US (not Russia) to cut its nuclear arsenal deeply. In January 2011, his administration announced another $178 bn in defense budget cuts and “efficiencies”.

And on April 13th, 2011, he demanded another $400 bn in defense budget cuts without even telling his own Defense Secretary or the Joint Chiefs.

In the summer of 2011, in the debt ceiling deal negotiations, he demanded massive defense budget cuts and got them – in the form of first tier BCA-mandated defense budget cuts ($487 bn) and a $600 bn sequester (which was HIS idea, not House Republicans’, contrary to his blatant debate lie, as confirmed by Bob Woodward’s newest book).

And now, Obama threatens to veto any attempt to cance sequestration, and to let it proceed, unless Congress agrees to his demands of massive tax hikes. In other words, he’s holding the US military hostage to his tax hikes agenda. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIixemuEe1s)

The fact is that Obama couldn’t care less about the military’s needs. He cares only about gutting America’s defense and finding the money for his unconstitutional domestic pet projects.

3) Obama claims that Romney would take America’s foreign policy back to the 1980s because Romney called Russia “America’s #1 geopolitical foe.” But Romney does not advocate a return to the Cold War. He advocates a more realistic, sober policy towards Russia, instead of the craven appeasement of the Kremlin that Obama has pursued for the last 3.5 years (the utterly failed “reset” policy).

Russia has repayed this craven appeasement with bomber exercises off the coasts of Alaska and California (whereby the Russians said they were “practicing attacking the enemy”, i.e. the US) without prior notification as required by the New START treaty, providing continued diplomatic protection to the regimes of Syria, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and Belarus (and providing the first two with modern weapons), threatening to use nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles against America and its allies, increased espionage, and an arms race against the US, driven by Putin’s hostility towards America as well as his desire to restore Russia’s superpower status. And with booming oil revenue, he has more than enough money to do that.

Russia has also harassed America’s ambassador to that country, expelled USAID from its soil, and withdrawn from the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, thus showing further its hostility towards the US.

Russia is no friend of the US. It’s a foe.

Romney’s plan is to treat Russia according to its ACTIONS, not according to Obama’s naive, childish dreams about “reset” and friendship with a KGB-thug-led Russia which sees itself as America’s enemy and practices attacks on the US. He will not start a new Cold War with Russia, but he will not cave in (or pledge any “flexibility”) to Russia either. For the first time ever, Putin will have to deal with a tough US president, not three successive appeasers (Clinton, Bush, and Obama).

4) Obama claims that Romney wants to add $2 trillion to the defense budget over the next 10 years. This is also patently false, as I have already documented here. To wit:

First, some simple math. Adding $2 trillion to defense over the next decade means adding $200 bn every year on average. If, in one year, the increase is smaller than the $200 bn average, increases in later years would have to be higher.

Spending $8.3 trillion on defense over the next decade would mean spending $830 bn every year, on average, on defense.

Mitt Romney does not propose anything even close to that. His proposals are far more modest, and very modest by historical standards.

Let’s start with the size of today’s (FY2012) base defense budget. It amounts to $531 bn, i.e. 3.47% of America’s GDP (which is $15.29 trillion) and less than 15% of the total federal budget. Obama’s proposed FY2013 base defense budget amounts to $525 bn, i.e. 3.43% of GDP.

(The Overseas Contingency Operations budget, i.e. the war costs, are planned to be $88.5 bn in FY2013, FY2014, and FY2015 before the US withdraws from Afghanistan, but they’re separate from the base defense budget; in any case, Mitt Romney’s pledge, and his detractors’ false claims, pertain to the base defense budget, so we’ll look only at that one for the purposes of this analysis.)

A 3.47% of GDP base defense budget means that, excluding the late 1990s, America is now devoting less (as a percentage of GDP) of its own wealth to its national defense than at any time since FY1941.

Mitt Romney’s plans

As stated above, Gov. Romney proposes to raise the base defense budget to 4% of GDP.* As stated above, America’s GDP is currently $15.29 trillion, so 4% of it would amount to $611.6 bn, or just $86.6 above what Obama plans for FY2013.

How the base defense budget would grow thereafter would be determined by how fast the US economy would grow, since Gov. Romney pledges to peg the defense budget to the economy’s size. If the economy doesn’t grow, neither will the defense budget; if it grows slowly, so will the defense budget.

Even if it grows at a fast pace like 4% per year, the defense budget would, as a simple mathematical consequence, also grow only by 4% per year under Romney’s plan.

Let’s assume, for example, that next year, the economy grows by 4%, from $15.29 trillion to $15.9016 trillion. Assuming even such luck with economic growth (i.e. a rapid recovery), the base defense budget, as a 4% fraction of GDP, would still amount only to $636.064 bn in FY2014. But that’s totally dependent on the economy growing rapidly. Even then, under such optimistic economic growth assumptions, the FY2014 base defense budget would still be only  $103 bn per year higher than Obama’s plan for FY2014 (which is 533.6 bn, see Figure 1-3 on page 1-3 of this DOD document).

And remember, they claimed Romney wants to increase base defense spending by $200 bn on average! Which only shows how badly wrong they are.

But let’s assume optimistically that within the next five years, by 2017, the economy grows to $17 trillion (a highly unlikely scenario). Even if that happens, that would still leave defense spending, as a 4% of GDP item, at $680 bn in FY2017 or FY2018. By comparison, Obama plans to spend $567.3 bn in FY2017 on defense. (See this DOD document, page 1-3, Figure 1-3.) The difference is $113 bn, far short of the $200 bn difference the Obama camp and its liberal allies claim.

Romney should pound Obama on sequestration and previous defense cuts

When Barack Obama visited Virginia on his propaganda tour this week, Mitt Romney and other Republicans rightly pounded Obama for his massive defense cuts, including sequestration. However, they did not appear to do so effectively enough, because Obama retains a lead over Romney in Virginia.

Yet, it will hit the military, the defense industry, and the entire Nation hard on January 2nd, 2013, if it is not cancelled. Over 103 bn dollars will be cut out of the base defense budget if it isn’t. The consequences for Virginia would be, inter alia, the following:

1) Every shipbuilding program would have to be cut deeply by the same percentage. And, as Secretary Panetta says, since you can’t buy 3/4s of a ship, that means no warships could be bought at all.

2) At least one, and perhaps more than one, carrier group would have to be eliminated.

3) The Virginia-based Northrop Grumman can forget about the opportunity to build a next-generation long-range-bomber for the Air Force.

4) The Navy can forget about adding the Virginia Payload Module to its submarines or modifying any further cruisers or DDGs with BMD capability. In fact, the Navy would have to be cut to below 230 ships – thus becoming smaller than the Russian Navy – down from today’s already-inadequate fleet of 285 ships. No prizes for guessing where most of these decommisioned ships would have to come from – NS Norfolk, VA, the Navy’s largest base.

5) At least one CAW, probably two, would have to be eliminated. Again, no prizes for guessing where that CAW would come from – most likely NAS Oceana, VA.

6) Hundreds of thousands of troops, including thousands of those based in Virginia, would have to be laid off immediately.

7) Massive layoffs would occur in the US defense industry, with up to 1 million jobs on the line. Virginia would be hit harder than any other state except California.

And that’s just for starters, and just the consequences for Virginia.

Barack Obama and his propaganda team falsely claim that these cuts are part of some sacred agreement that Republicans agreed to, and that they’ve not presented any serious solution to sequestration.

But that’s not true. Republicans HAVE presented serious solutions: the Sequester Reconciliation Act (authored by Rep. Paul Ryan and passed by the House), the Ryan Budget Plan (also passed by the House), and the Down Payment to Protect National Security Act (H.R. 3662, which would replace only 1 out of every 3 retiring government workers).

Yet, Obama has threatened to veto both Acts (he can’t veto a budget resolution) and any other legislation that does not raise taxes on the most productive Americans (those who earn more than 250,000 dollars a year), even though his own SECDEF says that sequestration would be an utter disaster.

It is also not true that Republicans created this problem. Obama demanded massive defense cuts – on top of all the cuts Secretary Gates had administered and scheduled before April 2011 – long before the need to raise the debt ceiling even arose. He demanded them in a GWU speech on April 13th, 2011. Then, in negotiations on the debt ceiling deal and the spending cuts that accompanied it, it was Obama and his Congressional Democrat chums who demanded deep defense cuts as a part of any deal, with Obama saying he wanted to deeply cut defense to protect welfare programs. The eventual deal contained 487 bn in immediate defense budget cuts and a sequester threatening to cut another 550 bn out of defense, starting in FY2013, if the Super Committee could not agree to any savings (which it couldn’t, so now the sequester has kicked in). Both of these tranches of defense cuts were included at the Democrats’ and Obama’s insistence.

The sequester itself was created by them specifically to force Republicans to choose between massive defense cuts and massive tax hikes, because Obama and the Dems know that Republicans hate both. It was a purely partisan tool to start with.

And yet, Obama, along with the Democrat-controlled, do-nothing-Senate, still uses the sequester as a political tool to extract massive tax hikes from Republicans. He continues to threaten to veto any legislation that does not raise taxes on the most productive Americans.

Republicans, including Mitt Romney, need to call Obama out on this in stronger words than those used so far.

To hold the US military, national security, and industrial base at risk for the sake of a political agenda (of raising taxes) is the most despicable thing a President can do. It completely disqualifies Obama from being President and even dog catcher. By doing so, Obama has proven that not only is he unfit to be President, he’s unfit to be a toilet cleaner.

Romney needs to wage a no-holds-barred offensive against Obama for that reason – in Virginia and beyond.

http://www.mittromney.com/blogs/mitts-view/2012/07/open-letter-president-obama-ahead-virginia-visit

Rebuttal of John Pickerill’s praise of Ron Paul

The leftist libertarian loon John Pickerill, who falsely claims to be a conservative, has endorsed Ron Paul and claims that Paul would be impossible for Obama to defeat, while nominating Romney somehow guarantees Obama a second term. He’s completely wrong, of course, but the most laughable part of his screed is the one in which he claims that Ron Paul supports a strong defense:

“Lastly, Ron Paul believes national defense is the single most important responsibility the Constitution entrusts to the federal government.”

That is a blatant lie, but then again, blatant lies are the only things one can expect from John Pickerill and other leftist libertarians.

The truth is that Ron Paul could not care less about defense. He stridently opposes a strong defense and does not believe that defense is the federal government’s (or anyone else’s) responsibility at all. He has always supported, and continues to support, deep defense cuts which would GUT the US military. In 2010, he cosponsored deep cuts to personnel numbers, the force structure (i.e. the size of the US military), modernization programs, O&M funds, and the nuclear arsenal together with his fellow strident liberals Barney Frank and Ron Wyden. Today, he supports the sequestration of defense spending (which would totally gut the military, see here: ) and cuts BEYOND sequestration. He even denies that sequestration would result in any defense spending cuts at all and claims it would produce only reductions in defense spending growth, even though this is a blatant lie, as proven, for example, here:

http://zbigniewmazurak.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/refuting-the-cogcs-lies-about-defense-spending/

Ron Paul supports deep cuts even to defense programs that protect ONLY the US. As an example, he has repeatedly voted to cut the Ground Based Interceptor program by $100 mn. The GBI, also known as the Ground Based Midcourse Defense System, is a missile defense system consisting of 30 interceptors based in AK and CA. It protects ONLY the United States and no other country (except Canada, which is contigous to the US). Its sole purpose is to defend the US homeland. Yet, Paul opposes even THIS program and has repeatedly voted to cut it.

@To quote Ronald Reagan, “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country.”"

One woefully out-of-date quote from Ronald Reagan (uttered before Reagan really knew Paul) from 1976 proves NOTHING. Ron Paul later showed his real face and proved himself to be a strident liberal, a total nonconservative, and a traitor to the GOP who called Reagan a totally failed President and resigned from the GOP because of him. (But in 1996, this saboteur came back crawling to the GOP.)

“Ron Paul will make sure our military spending is only for actual national security.”

It is ALREADY used only for actual national security. Hint: fighting terrorists in Afghanistan is CLOSELY related to America’s national security, despite Pickerill’s pious denials. And no, weapon programs don’t exist to enrich contractors, they exist to equip the military with the most modern weapons and equipment that America can make, equipment superior to that of America’s enemies, and for that reason, they are needed. If people get thousands of jobs as a result of producing these weapons, so much the better.

“He will keep our troops out of unconstitutional wars that entangle us in failed nation-building missions, so our troops can come home to defend America’s borders instead.”

The Afghan and Iraqi wars were authorized by Congress (by overwhelming, bipartisan margins, I might add). They were Constitutional. Furthermore, while I oppose nationbuilding and peacekeeping missions, bringing all troops back home would be much more expensive than keeping them where they are, or at least keeping some troops in strategic bases overseas.

“He will not pander to defense contracting lobbyists.”

Nor is the current Congress doing so, as evidenced by the passage of the Budget Control Act, which mandates over a trillion dollar in core defense budget cuts (including the sequester). If there are defense lobbyists on Capitol Hill, they are doing a bad job.

“He will protect our taxpayer dollars from being spent on a failed foreign policy of trying to be the policeman of the world.”

The US is not (and should not be) the world’s policeman. Any claims to the contrary are false. Furthermore, while any attempts by the US to be the world’s policeman would result in failure, isolationism, as proposed by Paul and Pickerill, would result in an even bigger failure, and a catastrophic one at that. Just like it failed in the run-up to WW2. Ron Paul’s isolationist “see no evil, hear no evil, if we leave them alone they’ll leave us alone” loony foreign policy is doomed to fail.

Furthermore, Paul would actually have been the EASIEST to beat of all Republican candidates, even easier to beat than Gingrich. That swivel-eyed loon who coddles truthers, Nazis, KKK thugs, 9/11 truthers, racists, and anti-Semites, and is a bone fide 9/11 truther and anti-Semite himself, would be so easy to beat that he would not win a single state against Obama, just like he failed to win a single state when he ran in 1988, 2008, and this time around. Paul is a loser and will never be President. He will be going home to his rocking chair after this election season is over, and not a moment too soon.

Romney is right: Russia IS a geopolitical foe of the US

After Obama made his promise to the Russians that he would sell America out on missile defense and other issues after the November election, which he’s arrogantly confident of winning, Mitt Romney criticized him for that, saying, quite rightly, that Obama should not be offering concessions to America’s “Number One geopolitical foe”.

As soon as he said that, pro-appeasement figures in DC, in and out of government, went furious and accused Romney of clinging to Cold War stereotypes and trying to start another Cold War. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also reacted sharply, making the same claims. (Russia has officially endorsed Obama, knowing that he’s a softie whom the Russians can push around and force to make unilateral concessions.) State Secretary Hillary Clinton claimed that Romney had “dated information” and that he doesn’t know what the US and Russia agree on and what they disagree on.

But Romney is right. While Russia is not strictly America’s #1 geopolitical foe (that dubious distinction belongs to China, whose rise is the biggest challenge to America), Russia is indeed a hostile state, based on it actions, not Medvedev’s pretty words.

Russia supplies anti-American regimes around the world with weapons, a shield from sanctions at the UN Security Council, and oftentimes, nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel. It supports the Communist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela (and supplies the latter with tons of modern weapons, including SAMs, fighters, and rifles). It shields North Korea and Iran from serious sanctions at the UNSC and supplies the latter with nuclear reactors and fuel (which Iran is using to produce nuclear weapons). Indeed, if Russia hadn’t done that, there would’ve been NO Iranian nuclear crisis today. It also sells weapons to Tehran, as it does to Syria (where those weapons are used to slaughter civilians), whom it also shields at the UNSC from accountability with its veto.

Russia, which has perpetrated aggression against one of its neighbors (Georgia) in recent years, still maintains troops on its territory (as defined by its internationally-recognized borders) is now waging an arms race against the US, fueled by very high oil and gas prices ($110/bbl, higher than ever since the 1970s). It plans to acquire, among other things, 400 new ICBMs, 8 new SSBNs, and hundreds of modern fighterplanes and 200 Su-34 fighter-bombers in the next decade, and will spend $770 bn in total on new weapons for its military (which it can afford due to high oil prices). Vladimir Putin says explicitly that this buildup is aimed at catching up with the US. Russia already possesses strategic nuclear parity with the US and a huge lead in tactical nuclear weapons. It is threatening to withdraw from the New START treaty and to deploy nuclear weapons on its western and southern borders if the US deploys any missile defense system in Europe. It has threatened to nuke Poland “as a first priority” if it allows the US to deploy missile defense systems on its soil, and in 2007 threatened to aim its nuclear-armed missiles at all European countries if any American BMD systems were deployed in Europe.

And contrary to Russia’s lies that these systems would undermine its nuclear deterrent, 10 interceptors would hardly be a threat to Russia’s arsenal of hundreds of ICBMs, SLBMs, bombers, and bomber-launched cruise missiles. What Russia really opposes is an alliance between Central European countries (such as Poland and the Czech Republic), which were freed from Moscow’s yoke only 2 decades ago, with Washington. As LTG Henry “Trey” Obering, a former Director of the MDA said in 2008, Russia did not actually raise any objections to missile defense in Europe in talks with the US until Washington revealed plans to deploy them specifically in Poland and the CR. It did not object at the time to placing a radar in Britain. Russia knows that missile defense poses no threat to its nuclear deterrent and is lying through its teeth; it merely opposes Poland’s and CR’s free choices, as sovereign countries, to ally themselves with whomever they choose. (In the 1990s, Moscow tried its best to keep these countries out of NATO.) Before these countries came under Moscow’s yoke in 1945, half of Poland was overrun by the Soviets in 1939 (and the USSR never gave back the territory it occupied) and 50 thousand of its officers were murdered in Katyn, and before that, Poland was attacked by them in 1920 but defended itself. Before that, for 123 years from 1795 to 1918, there wasn’t even a Polish state because of the partitions of Poland that occurred in the late 18th century, with Tsarist Russia being the principal partitionary power. So Warsaw and Prague have good reasons to be afraid of Russia.

Threats, subjugation, blackmail, and in Georgia’s case, aggression are the methods Russia uses to conduct is foreign policy.

And don’t get me started on its human rights record. Just ask the families of Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya or Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant for opinion on that.

Or, as Russian affairs expert Kim Zigfeld writes:

“To his great credit, Republican challenger Mitt Romney confronted Obama directly over his outrageous policy of appeasement towards Russia.  He expressed alarm that Obama was “looking for greater flexibility where he doesn’t have to answer to the American people in his relations with Russia” and reminded Obama that Russia is “without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight every cause for the world’s worst actor. The idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed.”

That’s dead right.  Russia has deluged Syria with powerful weaponry that has been used to carry out mass murder against women and children, and it has stood by Syria in all this against a tide of world opinion.  Russia supported Egyptian dictatorship; it supports Iran; it supports Cuba and Venezuela.  It supports American enemies wherever it finds them around the world, and that should surprise nobody.

Russia is ruled by a proud KGB spy who spent his entire life learning how to hate and destroy America and her values.  To suggest that Putin would somehow magically decide to throw away his life’s work just because the USSR collapsed is fanciful nonsense.”

It’s fanciful, indeed. It’s a delusion, but for many people, their delusions are “truths”. Medvedev himself has accused Romney of 70s’-style talk and a “Cold War mentality”, but it is Russia that actually uses Cold War language about the US, and judged by its behavior, Russia is indeed behaving like the Soviet Union – aggressively, unfriendly, and unhelpfully – towards the US. Romney is merely stating the facts. (But, as usual, stating the facts can get you into trouble.)

Even Afghanistan and the Northern Distribution Network is no proof of Russian “cooperation” or friendliness. Defeating Islamists in Afghanistan (and more broadly, Central Asia) is in Russia’s interests moreso than in America’s, because Russia is in close proximity to it and has troops in countries that neighbor Afghanistan. Islamic terrorism is even more of a threat to Russia than to the US, which is thousands of miles away (although still in danger). Russia did it out of its own selfish interest, not to help the US. And that one action hardly disproves the thesis that Moscow is a foe, or at least a dangerous rival, of America.

So, judged by its actions, Russia IS a geopolitical foe of the US, although not the biggest one – that dubious distinction belongs to China.

Those of us like me and Mitt Romney who are sounding the alarm bells about Russia are the true realists. We base our assessment of Russia based on the real world, on Russia’s ACTIONS.

Those who defend Obama’s failed “reset policy” and continue to advocate appeasement towards Moscow are the ignorant hacks here. They are unrealistic, naive children, dreaming of a pro-American Russia that ceased to exist when Yeltsin left office and will not arise again for decades, if ever.

Mitt Romney is absolutely right to point that Russia is a foe and to criticize Obama. I wish he’d go even further and call Obama’s “reset policy” what it is: a dismal failure that must be ended immediately.

Paul Ryan is right; the generals are wrong; or “how dare you question Obama’s infallible generals”!

Recently, House Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, decided to stop Obama’s process of gutting America’s defense, reject his pseudo-strategy, and pass a budget that adequately funds defense – adequately according to their and their advisors’ judgment, not that of Obama and his penny-pinchers in the Pentagon.

When asked by defense cuts’ supporters why he wants to provide more funding to the DOD than the DOD itself and the Joint Chiefs request, he replied, “I don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice.”

When he said that, the Democrats, other defense cuts’ supporters, and the media went ballistic, claiming that Ryan had called the generals “liars” and had insulted them, and calling on him to apologize. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey himself took umbrage at those words, while still claiming that the DOD developed a strategy first and a budget second when everyone knows it’s not true:

“[Ryan was] calling us, collectively, liars. (…) I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”

But Paul Ryan and other pro-defense Republicans is right, and their critics are dead wrong, for the following reasons.

Firstly, we know that Obama has a habit of pressuring senior generals to change their testimonies to suit their agenda. Just ask 4-star General William Shelton, the commander of USAF’s Space Command, who says Obama pressured him to do just that.

It is quite conceivable that the Joint Chiefs were also pressured to testify, wrongly, that the $487 bn in defense cuts ordered by Obama is survivable.

General Dempsey himself, before he was confirmed, testified that deep defense cuts would weaken defense, that “national security” spending did not cause the deficit problem and that cutting it will not solve it.

More recently, he said, quite correctly, that sequestration of defense spending (the second round of BCA-ordered cuts, totalling another $600 bn) would mean “we would no longer be a global power”. Today, under obvious pressure from the White House and other defense cuts supporters, he claims he was misunderstood and that he only meant that “we wouldn’t be the global power that we know ourselves to be today.”

No, General, that’s not what you originally said. That’s what the White House now tells you to say. I’m sure that if the White House told you “say that the sequester would be harmless”, you would be saying exactly that.

While I wouldn’t call the generals liars or fools, this is not the first time that someone has coached witnesses to deliver a favorable testimony.

Secondly, no matter how hard the generals and civilian DOD bureaucrats may insist to the contrary, the FACT is that Obama’s defense budget cuts mandate drove the pseudo-strategy the DOD issued in January, not the other way around. Obama demanded deep defense cuts, and the DOD had to produce a “strategy” to fit these cuts. That’s what happened, despite the generals’ and civilian bureaucrats’ pretensions to the contrary.

Obama demanded $400 bn in defense cuts on April 13th, 2011, during a budget issues speech at the GWU – long before there even was any talk of a debt ceiling deal. At the time, even his own SECDEF, Robert Gates, was surprised of the defense cuts mandate, and the DOD had to start working out how to implement them. Then, on August 1st, Obama negotiated a debt ceiling deal that mandated $487 bn in cuts from “security spending”, which Obama slapped exclusively on the DOD.

Only later was there any talk of a “strategy” to fit these cuts. Before April 2011, the DOD was not working on any “strategy” and was hoping that the cuts of January 2011 would be the last. Indeed, Gates himself cautioned against any further, let alone deep, additional defense cuts repeatedly, both in DOD briefings and Congressional testimonies. Yet, in April 2011, Obama slapped a $400 bn defense cuts mandate on him and the DOD.

Even if someone claims “the DOD knew for a long time that more budget cuts would be coming”, that doesn’t help them. In fact, it only proves my point. Budget cut mandates came first; the strategy came only later. Thus, the National Journal lied when it claimed

“Ryan’s frank rebuke of the generals came as he repeated an oft-heard Republican complaint: that the fiscal 2013 defense request (…) was not “strategy-driven,” but rather was based on an artificial spending cap imposed by the White House.”

That is not a mere “oft-heard Republican complaint”, that is a FACT. The FY2013 defense budget proposal was NOT strategy driven. It was based on an artificial spending cap that Obama instituted as early as April 2011 – long before there was any “strategy”!

And the DOD’s genuine strategy from just 2 years ago (when budget circumstances were even worse), the 2010 QDR, is quite different from this pseudostrategy. It called for a much larger and more capable military than this pseudostrategy calls for. Did the world become much safer in the last 2 years? No. Obama decided to cut defense even more deeply.

Thirdly, can’t we see it for ourselves that Obama’s new defense cuts would severely weaken the military? They include, inter alia, scrapping one third of the cruiser fleet (the 7 youngest cruisers), retiring 2 amphibious ships and many other vessels, eliminating 7 fighter squadrons, cutting funding for bombers by 40%, eliminating many crucial weapon development programs (including lasers, other directed energy weapons, and railguns), delaying many other crucial weapon programs (including the next-gen cruise missile) and procurements (including SSNs and SSBNs), cutting the shipbuilding plan by 16 vessels, cutting the already-underfunded nuclear-weapon-modernization program by 15%, and cutting 27 strategic and 65 tactical airlifters when the USAF already has too few of them. Anyone with half a brain should understand that this will weaken the military.

Fourthly, the generals are humans, not gods. They are not infallible – no more than I am or you are. As mere humans, they are just as prone to grave error – including a severe error of judgment – as everyone else. It’s time to stop fetishizing generals.

Lastly and most importantly, determining what’s necessary to defend America, and providing the necessary resources, is NOT the generals or the DOD’s job. It’s Congress’ job. The Congress is supposed to make America’s defense policy, and the generals, along with DOD civilians, are supposed to merely execute it. In other words, the Congress makes policy, and the generals are to obey.

The US Constitution vests the prerogatives to “provide for the common defense (…) of the United States”, “to raise and support Armies”, “to provide and maintain a Navy”, to make laws for governing the Armed Forces, to summon and discipline the Militia, to declare war, to punish piracies and felonies on the high seas, and to make appropriations SOLELY in the Congress. The Constitution gives Congress, and ONLY the Congress, the prerogative to make America’s defense policy – to determine both defense budgets AND programs and the force structure (along with bases, deployments, wars, and the UCMJ).

Of course, to make informed decisions, it needs the advice from many sources – and that includes not only serving generals, but also former military officers, independent analysts and study panels (such as the Hadley-Perry Panel), Congressional advisors/analysts, the CRS, and others.

But Congress is supposed to rely, above all, on its own knowledge and sound judgment (if it’s capable of rendering any – and it’s supposed to be). It should NOT fetishize generals and DOD bureaucrats, nor is it supposed to defer to them, let alone to President Obama. It must rely primarily on its own judgment and knowledge, for it, not the generals, is to make defense policy decisions (and take responsibility for them).

This entire  argument has four root causes. One is the understandable, but wrong deference to generals on defense policy caused by the fetish of generals. The second one is the overall worship of supposed “experts” (generals on defense policy, the SCOTUS on the Constitution, the IPCC on “global warming” – remember how skeptics like Jim Inhofe were treated when they questioned the saintly IPCC?) that Americans have been forced to perform since their primary school days. People are taught to blindly listen to “experts” and never question them; if you do, you’re condemned universally. Thirdly, decades ago, the Congress ceded its Constitutional prerogatives on defense policy to the Executive Branch long ago.

And fourthly, as schoolchildren and adults, members of Congress, like all Americans, were constantly taught and told NOT to think for themselves, to rely on others for judgment, and to defer on others on various issues. Such indoctrination not to think independently has caused most of them to be unable, or afraid, to render independent judgment.

And this needs to be corrected. Members of Congress are supposed to think for themselves, not defer to others.

Paul Ryan and HASC Republicans have shown they are capable of doing that. For that, they should be praised, not pilloried.

http://nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/paul-ryan-accuses-generals-of-budget-dishonesty-20120329

The Boston Globe’s lies about defense spending and warships

The Boston Globe, an extremely leftist, anti-defense newspaper based in Massachusetts, has recently published a pathetic propaganda screed railing against Mitt Romney’s pledge to increase defense spending to 4% of GDP (from 3.5% today) and to build additional 44 Navy warships. Their article also criticizes him (directly and through the mouths of leftist “independent analysts”) for decrying the Navy’s decline to its smallest size since 1916 and the Air Force’s decline to its smallest size ever.

Displeased that these metrics (which are credible, BTW), show the US military having significantly declined since the Cold War, the BG tries to change the goalposts and discredit these metrics, using dollar figures instead and claiming that because today’s ships and planes are more capable than those of the 1910s or the 1940s, numbers supposedly no longer matter. This is a claim that defense’s opponents frequently make when trying to justify defense cuts (even deep ones), and a view that many people profess. However, it is wrong.

Firstly, the number of ships and planes that a military has at its disposal is relevant and does, in a way, show its prowess (or the lack thereof), and in comparison to previous inventories and force levels, does show whether, and how badly, a military has declined. Secondly, there’s an unavoidable fact that will never cease being true – that one ship or one plane, no matter how technologically advanced it is, can be in only one place at any given time. As AEI’s defense issues expert Mackenzie Eaglen, who is quoted in the article a few times, says:

“One ship, one aircraft, or one brigade can only be in one place at one time around the world. So even with sophisticated technologies and people in the military, numbers still matter. A lot of deterring is achieved through physical presence of these assets. Quantity has a quality all its own.’’

And she’s 100% right.

Thus, it does matter a great deal how many ships and planes the US military has. The fewer ships and planes it possesses, the fewer places they can go to, the fewer things they can do at any given time, and the fewer enemies they can engage. In short, technology is no substitute for numbers.

So, although aircraft carriers cannot be compared to steamships or battleships of the WW1 years, each aircraft carrier/ship/cruiser/frigate/LPD/supply ship can be in only one place at a time.

Moreover, unlike in 1916 or 1917, America now has interests around the globe and allies on all continents, and is facing serious military/security threats on all continents as well: Venezuela and FARC in Latin America, Russia in Eurasia, China and North Korea in Eastern Asia, Iran and Islamic terrorist organizations in the Middle East, pirates in the Red Sea. These national interests, allies, defense commitments, and threats are far numerous, far serious, and far more widely dispersed around the world than they were in 1917, when the US faced fewer threats, had fewer interests around the world, and had no formal allies. So the USN needs far more ships now than it possessed in 1917.

The BG claims Romney would increase defense spending by 61% if he grows it to 4% from its projected level of 3.2%. That’s a lie. In percentage terms, this would represent 25% growth (by 0.8 pp from 3.2% of GDP). In absolute numbers, assuming that America’s GDP is $14.66 trillion (as the CIA World Factbook says), that means growing defense spending from $526 bn today to $586.4 bn (4% of $14.66 trillion), a growth of $60.4 bn, i.e. by only 11.5% – far less than the 61% that the BG claims.

Moreover, the BG is propagating the Obama campaign’s lie that defense spending will shrink only as a percentage of GDP and only in FY2013, after which, the BG claims, it will resume growth:

“Romney is correct in noting that core defense spending is slated to fall as a percentage of GDP if war costs are not included, analysts said. Obama has proposed a 2013 Pentagon budget of $525 billion, a $6 billion cut from a year earlier, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Romney has vowed to restore the cuts and increase spending.

But Obama campaign officials said that calculating the spending as a percentage of the nation’s economy does not tell the whole story, noting that, after next year, the defense budget is slated to increase in dollar terms.”

This is completely false. US defense spending – with or without war costs counted in – has shrunk this FY and is slated to shrink further in the next FY and in the years afterward (so the claim that it will climb back in FY2014 is false), both in dollar terms and as a percentage of GDP. The core defense budget has shrunk in real terms from $552 bn in FY2011 to $531 bn this year, and is slated to decline to $525 bn in FY2013 and further in the following years. But war spending has also declined (from $160 bn in FY2011 to $115 bn this FY) and is slated to shrink further, to $88.5 bn in FY2013 and eventually zero out in FY2016 after the last US troops leave Afghanistan. Thus, both core defense and war spending is set to shrink dramatically in the years ahead, having already been cut, and the total military budget will thus shrink significantly as a result, both in dollar terms and as a percentage of GDP, even without sequestration. Moreover, the BG is understating its impact – it will cut another $600 bn (not $500 bn) out of the defense budget over a decade, ON TOP OF the $487 bn cuts already mandated by the debt ceiling deal and translated into details by Secretary Panetta.

As data from the CBO, presented in Graph 1, shows, defense spending will not return to its FY2011 levels until FY2019 at the earliest, even without sequestration, and that assumes that Congress makes no additional defense cuts.

As Graph 2 shows, defense spending will be cut to slightly above $500 bn and stay there indefinitely, barring a policy change.

Likewise, this graph from the anti-defense, Soros-funded CATO Institute is completely false. It falsely projects that under Obama’s plan, defense spending would remain constant throughout this decade and then grow again in the early 2020s, while Romney’s 4%-of-GDP proposal would shoot it up over $600 bn in FY2014, over $700 bn in mid-decade and over $800 bn by the end of this decade. America’s GDP would have to grow at a neckbreaking pace for 4% of it to constitute such a huge sum. (Remember: currently, 4% of GDP is just $586.4 bn.)

And despite Team Obama’s protestations, percentage of GDP is a more credible measure of spending than raw dollar figures, because it accounts for how much of a burden on the economy and on taxpayers a budget is. That measure, not raw dollar figures, tells us how much something costs and, quite literally, how seriously a nation treats its defense. And by that measure, defense has been neglected since the 1990s.

But mere dollar and inventory data don’t even begin to show the decline of the US military, which is now a shadow of its former self. Far more troubling is the dire material state of the current military, and that is the argument that Romney should’ve used. As Mackenzie Eaglen says:

“An Air Force F-15C literally broke in half during flight some years ago. Today, every single Navy cruiser hull has cracks; A-10C Warthogs have fuselage fractures, and the UH-1N Twin Huey helicopter fleet is regularly grounded. Over half the Navy’s deployed aircraft are not ready for combat.

Last April, the engine of a F/A-18C Hornet caught fire aboard the USS Carl Vinson. Last March, the engine of a Marine Hornet about to take off from the USS John C. Stennis exploded.

As these aging aircraft were bursting into flames, senior officials were warning Washington politicians that keeping the older fighter planes in safe flying condition was “one of their most serious challenges.”

Built in the 1980s and 1990s, the jets were designed to fly for 6,000 hours. Delayed delivery of the replacement F-35, however, has forced the services to squeeze an additional 4,000 flight hours out of the Hornets.”

There’s more proof of the military’s poor material condition, but this nicely illustrates the problem. The equipment aspect is no better. The vast majority of the military’s equipment is outdated, dilapidated, and not survivable in today’s threat environment marked by advanced, 21st century weapons, including A2/AD weaponry. It was produced mostly in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, which means the US is still living off the defense investments of those times. This cannot continue much longer.

Per former AF Secretary Michael Wynne, “The Air Force is going out of business”, as its old planes (whose average age is 24) fall out of the sky. So yes, it does matter that the Air Force is “older than ever since its establishment”.

The claims of Team Obama that

“Thanks to the president and his foreign policy accomplishments, our nation is stronger and more secure than it was when he took office. The bottom line remains the same – we have the strongest military in the world and that won’t change.’’

are so ridiculous they are downright laughable. Obama has zero foreign policy accomplishments to his name, and because of him and his failed appeasement and unilateral disarmament policies, America is dramatically weaker and dramatically less secure than it was when he took office (as proven by me in my other blogposts). And unfortunately, despite Team Obama’s and Christopher Preble’s claims, the US no longer has the strongest military in the world, and is slated to become even far weaker unless it completely reverses course. Team Obama is simply trying to lull the American people into a false sense of security, but fewer and fewer Americans are buying this garbage. In his first year, Obama closed over 30 crucial modernization programs (including the F-22, CSAR-X, MKV, KEI, and AC-X), thus depriving the military of badly needed equipment which was needed to replace old gear. These cuts were continued in 2010 (the C-17, F-35 Alternative Engine, the CGX cruiser, etc.) and 2011. He has also badly cut the US nuclear arsenal and nuclear modernization programs (allowing the nuclear stockpile to atrophy) and has signed the New START treaty, and recently, he has decided to give Russia missile defense secrets so that Russia can pass them on to China, Iran, and North Korea. Obama has made America radically less secure.

Meanwhile, Obama is cutting defense spending deeply; most of the defense budget goes to personnel and other running “fact of life” costs; little new military equipment is bought; and the military is forced to continue using old, obsolete, worn out equipment, while China is buying large quantities of new weapons and thus rapidly modernizing its military.

Moreover, Romney has failed to mention objective, independent studies which show that America’s defense investments, force structure, and modernization programs are dramatically inadequate. For example, last year, an independent study by the partisan Hadley-Perry Panel, co-chaired by former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry and former Bush NS Advisor Stephen Hadley, found that:

“The aging of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force structure.”

Fully modernizing the military will, according to the Panel, “require a substantial and immediate additional investment that is sustained through the long term.” Those are findings of a bipartisan, non-politically-motivated, neutral panel composed of men who are not running for any office and are not pandering to anyone.

The Panel also found that the Navy’s 283-ship-fleet is woefully inadequate and that the Navy actually needs 346 vessels. In late 2011, the left-leaning CNAS did its own study which arrived at the same conclusion. Both based their studies on the Navy’s needs of today and projected future needs, NOT historic Navy force levels. So even if you discard historic force size as the BG and leftist pseudoanalysts want to, that still doesn’t help them, because these two entities deem the Navy’s ship fleet woefully inadequate based on the requirements of today and the future, not past ship numbers.

So by any objective measure, the US is NOT spending enough on defense, and the US military is in a dire material condition, both in terms of maintenance of readiness as well as modernization and force structure.

The one thing that Romney is wrong about – and conservative analysts like Mackenzie Eaglen and James Carafano have stated this – is that the “4% of GDP” goal is achievable in this decade. Sadly, it isn’t. The President cannot appropriate money by himself; Congress is a full partner, and even without Obama, the Congress is extremely unlikely to agree to defense spending increases, especially when the country is already dealing with trillion-dollar deficits every year. Romney surely knows this.

To sum up, while numbers matter a great deal, and while Americans should be worried that the Navy and the Air Force have dramatically declined in size over the past decades, there is even more convincing evidence of America’s growing weakness and inadequacy of its defense investments: the dire material state and unreadiness of the military’s current equipment and units; the obsolescence, old age, wearing out, and lack of survivability of most of that equipment; the growing foreign threats which require survivable, stealthy weapons; the fact that a ship or a plane, no matter how technologically advanced, can be in only one place at a time; and the inadequate force structure (woefully inadequate in the Navy’s case) measured against the requirements of today and tomorrow, as reported by two independent entities (the Hadley-Perry panel and the CNAS). Mitt Romney should have used these arguments instead of arbitrary money figures and past force structures. Even if leftists like BG journalists claim that today’s supposedly advanced ships cannot be compared to those of 1916, that still doesn’t help them – the Navy’s size is still woefully inadequate compared to the requirements of today and the future.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/03/19/mitt_romneys_defense_budget_target_is_lofty/?page=3

Graph 1. The scheduled decline of defense spending. Source: the CBO.

Graph 2. Obama’s plans to cut defense spending and to grow all other kinds of federal spending way above it. Source: the Heritage Foundation.

The lies of US News

In a hilarious post, ridiculously titled ”Mitt Romney’s Lies”, the liberal US News magazine accuses Romney of lying about several issues, including President Obama’s disastrous defense cuts and his apologies for America to the rest of the world:

Defense cuts. In an October speech on national security, Romney promised to “reverse President Obama’s massive defense cuts.” One problem: Pentagon spending has gone up under Obama, from $594 billion in 2008 to $666 billion. The 2011 request was for $739 billion. As Rick Perry would say, “Oops.”

[Read the U.S. News debate: Are Cuts to the Defense Budget Necessary?]

No apologies. Romney has said that Obama “went around the world and apologized for America.” This is part of the conservative, dog-whistle meme that Obama is un-American (and possibly even a foreigner!). While the notion of an international apology tour is a staple of the conservative case against Obama, it is also fictitious. The Washington Post’s fact-checker concluded that “the claim that Obama repeatedly has apologized for the United States is not borne out by the facts, especially if his full quotes are viewed in context.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology from Romney on this one.

Let’s start with US News’ first lie: that President Obama hasn’t cut defense and that DOD spending has increased under President Obama by as much as they claim.

While the core defense budget and the total DOD budget did peak in Obama’s first year, at $563 bn and $700.19 bn, respectively (in inflation-adjusted dollars), they have been constantly shrinking since then. The DOD’s budget for FY2011 was $671 bn (of which the core defense budget was just $528.9 bn). The core defense budget has now shrunk to $526 bn, the GWOT (OCO) budget to $118 bn, and the total defense budget to $644 bn, a cut of $27 bn. The GWOT (OCO) budget is scheduled to shrink annually and eventually zero out by FY2015 (when the last American troops return home from Afghanistan), and as for the core defense budget, Obama plans to cut it by almost $500 bn ($487 bn, to be exact) over the next 10 years, i.e. $48.7 on average.

In FY2008, the core defense budget was $481.4 bn and there was also a GWOT budget of $145.2 bn, for a total DOD budget of $626.6 bn in NOMINAL DOLLARS (not adjusted for inflation). In inflation-adjusted dollars, the FY2008 core defense budget was $525.25 bn, i.e. roughly as much as today ($526 bn), and the GWOT supplemental budget was $158.43 bn in FY2012 dollars, for a total DOD budget of $683.68 bn in today’s money. So the total DOD budget has SHRUNK SIGNIFICANTLY since FY2008 and the core defense budget is now of the same size as it was in FY2008.

The $594 bn figure for FY2008 is false. In nominal dollars, the total DOD budget was $626 bn in FY2008; in inflation-adjusted dollars, it was $683.68 bn.

Furthermore, their claim that the DOD’s budget request for FY2011 was $739 bn is a blatant lie. The DOD has never requested that amount of money for any fiscal year, including FY2011. For that FY, it requested $708 bn, and got only $671 bn. That’s much less than the $739 bn that US News claimed.

Of course, Obama’s defense spending cuts is probably not the only issue Romney meant. Romney also talked about other Obama defense cuts during that speech: the closure of over 50 crucial weapon programs in FY2010 and FY2011 (which meant cutting $330 bn out of the DOD’s accounts and spending plans), the unilateral US nuclear arsenal cuts conducted under the New START treaty, and Obama’s cuts and cancellations of numerous missile defense programs. So YES, Obama HAS cut defense – both defense spending AND defense programs (including modernization programs and missile defense projects). Romney didn’t lie; US News lied.

Oops, indeed, US News – but you are the one who is lying!

The second lie that I will refute in this post is their denial that Obama has engaged in apologies for America abroad. Obama HAS apologized for America, and repeatedly so. For example, in April 2009, in France, during a press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, he apologized for America, claiming that instead of celebrating the EU, the US has been “arrogant” and “dismissive”. And last year, as the anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approached, Obama offered the Japanese government a public apology in these cities by himself, a story reported by the Investors’ Business Daily among others.

So no, Mitt Romney wasn’t lying. US News and WaPo’s so-called “fact-checker” were lying.

Hey, US News fools, you are owned!

Mitt Romney tries to dodge the Tampa GOP debate

As has been reported by the media, Mitt Romney is trying to dodge the upcoming Tampa GOP presidential debate, which will be held before the Florida GOP presidential primary on January 31st.

Why is Romney trying to avoid it? Because he doesn’t want to debate with Newt Gingrich. And why doesn’t the Massachusetts RINO want to debate with him? Because he’s too afraid of him. In fact, he’s scared to death of him. Gingrich is an excellent debater and can take on anyone, while Romney is a lousy discussion partner who gets angry and discomfortable whenever he’s challenged, criticized, or asked a difficult question.

But if he can’t debate Newt Gingrich, how can he take on Barack Obama?

The answer is: he can’t.

Republicans must not nominate this proven RINO loser. If he were to win the GOP nomination, Obama would have a field day with him.

Bruce Fein covering up Ron Paul’s disastrous record on defense issues

Because Republican voters are apparently becoming increasingly concerned about defense issues – even though most of them have been callously indifferent to these issues for many years until now – and because a growing majority of Americans and Republicans opposes defense cuts and other weak defense policies, the Ron Paul campaign team is desperate to portray Ron Paul as being strong on defense.

They will fail, however, because Ron Paul is in fact extremely weak on this issue, and stands to the far left of Barack Obama and the Democrats. It’s hard to misportray a record that is glaringly obvious.

Nonetheless, they are desperately trying. Recently in the pages of the Daily Caller, “senior advisor to Ron Paul” Bruce Fein, whom I have repeatedly disproven here and on DC’s website, tried to argue that no presidential candidate is stronger on defense than Ron Paul. Fein claims that Paul is stronger on defense (i.e. on protecting America itself) than any other presidential candidate, and merely opposes wars of intervention, deployments of troops abroad, alliances, and defense commitments  to foreign countries.

Assuming (just for the sake of argument – not that his claim is true, just for the sake of argument) that all of them are bad and should all be terminated and the troops brought back home from all foreign countries, Ron Paul is very weak on the issue of defending America itself, even weaker than Huntsman, even if one were to assume that the US military should defend only the US proper.

Specifically, Ron Paul has been arguing against, voting against, and working against all defense budgets and many crucial defense programs of the last 30 years,  including President Reagan’s defense budgets and the B-1 bomber program. Not just against OCO spending, but also against core defense budgets and crucial weapon programs.

Furthermore, last year he teamed up with extremely leftist Democrats Barney Frank and Ron Wyden to cut defense spending by $1 trillion, dramatically cut the force structure, dramatically cut the US nuclear arsenal, and cancel many crucial weapon programs, including the F-35, the next generation bomber program, the V-22, etc. These disastrous proposals were, fortunately, rejected by the Congress. Now Ron Paul has become the staunchest Washington advocate (besides liberal Congressman Jerrold Nadler of NY) for the sequester and the huge defense cuts it would make. And yet, Paul still denies that the sequester will cut defense spending at all, instead claiming it will merely reduce the growth of defense spending, which is a blatant lie disproven by myself as well as Daniel Horowitz.

Ron Paul’s own budget plan calls not only for a total elimination of the OCO budget in FY2013 and an immediate withdrawal of all US troops from all countries around the world (which would INCREASE the costs of military bases by adding new MILCON costs to the defense budget), but also for a 15% cut of the core defense budget, down to $501 bn in FY2013, on top of all the defense cuts already administered or scheduled. Defense spending would then remain below $520 bn (and below $510 bn until FY2015) forever. Furthermore, all of the DOE’s defense-related programs would presumably be crowded into this inadequate defense budget, since Paul’s budget plan calls for a total abolition of the DOE and zeroing out funding for it, while not calling for any cut, let alone total abolition, of the pork dollars with which he lards all annual Appropriation Bills before he casts meaningless votes against their final passage.

In sum, Bruce Fein’s pathetic attempt to portray Ron Paul as strong on defense is not just pathetic, it’s false. It’s factually wrong. No other GOP candidate, except Gary Johnson and Jon Huntsman, is as weak on defense as Ron Paul. Nominating him would mean surrendering the GOP’s traditional advantage and credibility while removing President Obama’s biggest electoral vulnerability from the table. This must be rejected.