Tag: Joint Chiefs of Staff

6 reasons why sequestration should not occur

6 reasons why sequestration should not occur

Posted by zbigniewmazurak on April 14, 2012

Less than 9 months from now, on January 2nd, 2013, the sequestration of defense spending will kick in unless the Congress stops it.

The opponents of a strong defense are triumphing. They are this close to achieving what they’ve been striving to achieve for decades: completely gutting America’s defense, so they will be able to do what none of America’s external enemies have been able to accomplish: bring the US military to its knees.

So now, as the Congress mulls whether to save defense from sequestration, they are protesting and pressuring the Congress to allow the sequester’s deep, unjustifiable, disproportionate defense cuts to occur.

So I’d like to present the facts to the Congress and the public: 6 reasons why defense spending sequestration should not and must not occur.

#1: It would gut the military. Continue reading “6 reasons why sequestration should not occur”

A Stampede of Hysterics

A Stampede of Hysterics

February 15, 2013

This article orginally appeared on ForeignPolicy.com.

I read two critically important reports this week on the impact that sequestration would have on national defense. That possible reduction in military spending — $48 billion, or 7.4 percent of the $645 billion currently appropriated for fiscal year 2013 — is being characterized by the stampede of hysterics who run the Pentagon as the virtual end of national security as we know it. What these two reports show is that we should now consider the Pentagon as morally and mentally broken as Congress.

The first report, by Chuck Spinney, who spent a few decades inside the Department of Defense evaluating budgets, weapons, and bureaucratic behavior, was published at Counterpunch and Time‘s Battleland blog. The second was a Congressional Research Service report by Amy Belasco, who has spent the last few decades at CRS and the Congressional Budget Office parsing defense budgets and their implications. Continue reading “A Stampede of Hysterics”

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