posted on Aug, 18 2004 @ 01:49 PM
Two questions...
First, what happens after we leave S. Korea and Germany? Meaning: how much money will be saved after we have to engage in the massive environmental
cleanup associated with closing a base?
Second, why is the assumption that Rumsfeld is taking, that a military can be run like a business, where employees are laid off (troop reductions) to
maintain the bottom line, seem so natural to everyone? If you want to reduce the cost of maintaining an army, then don't build crappy, overpriced
weapons systems with no proven track record for billions of dollars. Don't spend billions of dollars being bilked by Halliburton and KBR for
essential services. When it comes right down to it, better bullets and weapons systems does not translate into a greater combat effectiveness. You
give a soldier $50,000 worth of equipment and he gets shot, you've got $50,000 worth of equipment strapped to a lump of rotting meat. You need to be
sure you've got another soldier who is ready to strip that gear off his fallen comrade and wield it to victory. When you've got six guys out there
with $1,000,000 of equipment and they get killed and you've lost that equipment and you've got no additional soldiers to go out and reclaim and use
that equipment, you're gonna start losing battles.
The army isn't a business and has found success in the fact that it doesn't work all that hard to maintain an arbitrary bottom line. Once we turn
our soldiers from fighters to accountants, we're toast. We simply need bodies to throw at some conflicts, not equipment.