Who was better at reducing Military Spending?

[harun]

[Clio the Leo]

1. If only Bill had the foresight to know that a warmongerer would follow him into office.....

.... perhaps he wouldn't have reduced our military so.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. Or maybe he'd have reduced it further

to make it harder to escalate pointless wars.

Bill Clinton didn't exactly end the war, just kept it on low simmer, enforcing the northern and southern no-fly zones, mosly from the air, but no doubt with a few key ground-pounders to illuminate interesting targets.

18 years we've been in Iraq. This will be a longer war than Vietnam.

:hi:

[Historic NY]

3. Actually most of his was done because of Cheney & Bush 1...

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/04/as-pentagon-chi/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/09/opinion/main642456.shtml

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=1804

[MidwestRick]

7. Very true.

My AF Reserve unit was cut by 50% while maintaining the same mission requirements. The worst part was we were activated for Kosovo shortly there after.

[Sebastian Doyle]

8. Yep. Poppy reduced the size of the military because the cold war had ended

And the US had no credible threats. Seemed like a reasonable decision at the time (one of the few times I could say that about Poppy or Cheney) and Clinton's cuts were just extensions of the plan laid out by them.

Of course nobody was thinking then of Poppy's own Frankenstein monster "Al Qaeda" turning on us.

[One_Life_To_Give]

4. Considering the opportunity presented?

I think the advantage goes to Obama. Clinton has for more in total dollars but coming as it did at the end of the cold war. There was so much more available to cut. It would be like crediting Truman with cost cutting for canceling contracts at the end of the war.

[invictus]

5. Not to defend Bush, but Clinton was no better. Clinton's policy was a slow genocide of Iraq ...

... through sanctions for non-existent nuclear weapons, constant bombings with countless civilian casualties, and denial of much needed civilian equipment such as pipes for water treatment plants because of supposed dual-use for making weapons. Clinton handed his entire Middle East policy to AIPAC founder and non-US citizen Martin Indyk whom he made Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, probably the first foreigner to hold such a high level foreign policy position while not a US citizen--Indyk is a citizen of Australia. Clinton was a shill for AIPAC and corporations. Nothing more. Don't kid yourself that Clinton was some kind of liberal. Clinton was a monster with no conscience.

[harun]

9. I'm definitely not kidding myself about Clinton. I have yet to see any

movement from Obama on even talking about a reduction in military spending. You do not get an economic recovery in the U.S. without it. We got strong economic growth under Clinton because he reduced the military spending and strengthened the dollar. A weak dollar means expensive oil. So if Obama thinks he can spend militarily like a B*sh and get economic growth like under Clinton, he is delusional.

[slackmaster]

6. Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford did a bit better than Bill Clinton

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904490.html