Bush/Rumsfeld are Morons?

[BD]

I just heard on the evening news that the base closure list includes Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and the Groton CT Sub Base. So I guess we're going out of the global "Naval Power" business? I suppose we could order and service new subs from China or Germany if we need them? Got to love that option as both those countries have been such stalwart allies for so long:( Oddly, both Texas and Florida get a net gain in military spending from this deal. I'm trying to remember the last sub that was serviced in Texas, but it's not coming to me??? Probably I'm just missing the logic behind this, getting old and all. BD

[45 2.1]

All this is just a ploy to get more money. Cry Wolf too many times and everyone knows what will happen next. They've done this right before a planned military action in the past and it looks like they will go after something else which means the draft will go again also.

[StarMetal]

They are closing a big base in S. Dak too which is the second largest employer of the whole state so I've heard. This country had gone plumb loco. I agree with Bob.

Joe

[waksupi]

I'm rather surprised to see Ellsworth, SoDak on the list, as it is a major strategic bomber base. I doubt it closes. I'm sure it is a payback for Daschle loosing his seat in the last election. Too much of game playing in our government, witness the row today about the border patrol not supposed to pick up illegals where the Minute Man project had been operating. Good riddanceb to Daschle. The Black Hills tourist area is what brings the money in to that part of the state. Just try to drive up close to Mt. R1ushmore, or the Crazy Horse Monument to see what I mean.
I asked a retired AF M/Sgt about it today. He says we could do away with Maelstom in Great Falls easier, as they are basicallyin charge of the nuclear missisles based in the state, and it could be reduced considerably. Most of the mission on Maelstrom is air refueling, and that can be done much more efficiently from bases near the coast, as the continental flights are not all that stategically important.

[StarMetal]

Thing is why the downsizing? Reagan built the military up. Then Clinton downsized it to the point to where it was pitiful. In his election speechs Bush said he would build the military up and keep it stronge. Now he's downsizing it. We're going to get caught with our pants down. Two of our enemies now have nuclear weapons and hate us, N. Korea and Iran. Our military might is one thing that has kept our enemies at bay, especially in the Cold War with the Soviets. God forbid if that mental midget, President of N. Korea, uses a nukie on someone. I'm afraid all hell will break out.

Far as the border patrol and the illegals...this country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Joe

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The United States has twenty times the military expenditure of the next twenty nations put together, and those which people regard as potential enemies are nowhere near the top of the list. If that isn't good enough, the intelligent way to approach the problem is to ask whether there is some other way to approach the problem. It seems unlikely that North Korea or Iran actually have nuclear weapons, and it doesn't much matter if they do, for they still have to worry about geting caught with their fingers on the button and a large smoking hole where it can't do them any good. Neither of those countries have a leadership anywhere near as dim as Saddam, and his had to be invented. Anyway, the United States doesn't mind a smal nation having nuclear weapons while it is actually engaged in wars of conquest outside its borders. What about Israel?

[fatnhappy]

The United States has twenty times the military expenditure of the next twenty nations put together, and those which people regard as potential enemies are nowhere near the top of the list. If that isn't good enough, the intelligent way to approach the problem is to ask whether there is some other way to approach the problem. It seems unlikely that North Korea or Iran actually have nuclear weapons, and it doesn't much matter if they do, for they still have to worry about geting caught with their fingers on the button and a large smoking hole where it can't do them any good. Neither of those countries have a leadership anywhere near as dim as Saddam, and his had to be invented. Anyway, the United States doesn't mind a smal nation having nuclear weapons while it is actually engaged in wars of conquest outside its borders. What about Israel?


Leadership nowhere near as dim as Saddam?
Yeah right.
How many civilians does Kim Il Jong have to butcher to qualify as a tyrant?

Sorry, the Israel anology doesn't hold water. Besides being a representative Republic and accountable to the citizenry, few nations on earth have the burning firsthand knowledge of savagery and genocide as does Israel. I think I'd prefer to see Israel with nukes than the mullahs of Iran, thank you very much. Besides, how the hell is Israel engaged in a war of conquest? Seems to me the lands they hold that are in "question" were seized because Israel was attacked. I think that's a little more than just a minor point.

[JBMauser]

Well, I am no expert in the topic of base closing but I was very surprised to hear that we still have over 300 bases. This closure is less than 10%. I realize that we do not need a twentieth century base structure with a twenty first century military that is no longer geared up to wage a two theater war. I for one would prefer to demolish some of the old bases and build systems that would offer our troops and their families a decent life and provide an incentive for those highly skilled to stay in and become the core of the new high tech forces. I hope we build a "gitmo" type base in Iraq that we own as US soil so we can stick our finger in the eye of any two bit despot in the region and we can clear a 1000 yd. kill zone all around it to accommodate any fadiene (sic) that wish to ask Allah for his spare virgins. As Martha would say if she had any sense "Thinning the herd.... It's a good thing" JB

[JBMauser]

Ballistics in Scotland, your point about a smoking hole does not take into the fact that when these weapons are in place it becomes a huge deterrent against the rest of the world to retaliate against any mischief they may wish to unleash on the World or their neighbors. N Korea could play the “drop the nuke on Tokyo card unless we stand down and let them march South. Same with Iran and Israel. It is a tremendous shift in power. Kind of like a mugger holding a knife to your wife’s throat and telling you to put your gun down and give him your wallet. It don’t matter if you paid 20 times more for your gun than his knife. You can’t risk it, you can’t bring her back and you can’t buy Japan another Tokyo. You can’t rely on the fact that Kim will not pull the pin on a nuke because he has proven that though he values his own skin he has little regard for his people. If either of the countries loose their fear of us or another, bad blank will happen as it has in the past. The world may not understand or value the fact that the strongest country on the planet has no imperialistic desires. If we did we would take it all at our whim. I do not expect them to be thankful. JB

[shooter575]

I think the base list all come out of the pentagon and not capital hill. They have the next phase of it. Most people know we have too many bases.Many are not needed in this post cold war era.Some can be doubled up to provide savings. Thing is the most important base to any congressman is the one in his district.Leaving it all up to the politicans will result in nothing being closed.
Here in Michigan we lost 3 SAC bases and the Tank arsenal in previous rounds. Hell at one time we provided good well paying jobs for all of our people and every male in Ky./Tn. too.Now we have the highest unemployment in the nation.
That was then, This is now. I dont like it.But we will muddle through.I have faith in you guys and the citizens in general.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

On the other hand, you can't treat a person as a mugger when the only evidence he might be is that he COULD have a knife, he might hold a knife to your wife's throat in the future, or that you can profit or derive some sort of unclean pleasure from attacking him. Well, actually paying someone else to attack him. Yes, the list of overpriced Iraqi contracts allotted without the consent of the people to Republican campaign contributers most certainly was evidence of imperialistic intentions, and it is a most fortunate thing for the United States that they have proven unable to take even one of the weakest and worst-organised countries in the world at their whim. "Capital Hill" may be a Freudian slip, but it is a good one.

Israel was attacked in 1948, when they formed a state in violation of the principles on which the United Nations had ended the British Mandate, and again in 1956. It wasn't attacked in 1967, when the lands now most heatedly in dispute were taken, and if it had been, it wouldn't have been by the people they then took the lands from. Very few Israelis still living have as much first-hand knowledge of savagery or genocide (at the hands of a country that got that way through representative democracy) as the Palestinians.

They have also ignored far more, and more clearly expressed, UN resolutions than Saddam. That Israel never joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, rather than withdrew from it in proper form like North Korea, is merely an indication of the different pressures the US government chooses to exert on it in exchange for weapons and money.

It is for the privileges of arming a belligerent and subsidising its economy during active hostilities, and supporting a few puppet regimes that you don't know or care about, that America's reputation in the Islamic world is different from a gigantic and more munificent Switzerland, capable of enriching its own people by pouring out products the world demands, and filling the gap into which China is stepping now.

I can't help getting the feeling that in a different context, you might have been crying out for action that would have had the Japanese building themselves a new Tokyo. No, I don't believe any recent American invasion or threat has had anything to do with tyrants killing their own people. Why not, in that case, have invaded Guatemala, or even stop the people doing it from getting "counterinsurgency" training at the School of the Americas in Georgia? Even the CIA World Factbook makes it 100,000 dead and calls it a guerilla war, but most other people say 200,000, with precious little war about it. I've seen film of mass graves being opened, and nice floral dresses the female and juvenile guerillas wore.

The Guantanamo naval base represents the Castro government's honouring a treaty made by its predecessors, who didn't think to include a clause providing for voiding the lease for moral turpitude. There is very little possibility of anything like that arising in Iraq, and the idea of seizing land for an illegal concentration camp is a disgusting suggestion. Fortunately there is little chance of Bush or Rumsfeld being as moronic as all that. People dim enough to want that can be fooled out of their votes. But imagine, for a moment, President Bush having to tell his father that he must pretend to consider such a monstrosity.

I think Castboolits is a specialist website, and needs to clean up its act on racial and religious bigotry. There are plenty of places on the net that don't mind it.

[Bass Ackward]

[QUOTE=I think Castboolits is a specialist website, and needs to clean up its act on racial and religious bigotry. There are plenty of places on the net that don't mind it.[/QUOTE]

BIS,

History is rifle with opinions on wars and war in general. Everything depends on which side you look at. But one fact remains, and as rich with history as your own country is, you should appreciate it; there will always be disagreements between people .... or governments.

Europe was fast to jump on Iraq because Iraq was the cow who's tit they were milking. Then they crank up their propaganda machines that favor one particular point of view to present to their citizenry with a logical set of "facts" so the citizenry can form a logical conclusion that surely any .... sane man could see. While denying others. Key word there was .... facts.

All the while they never mention the Baltics where their "sole" justification for .... pacification was not weapons of mass destruction, but genoside. Genoside (can you believe it) when only 1/10th the amount of people had been killed that were killed by Sadam. With 10 times as many people dead, Europe should have cried for the Iraq war if they weren't hipocrits .... or racists themselves.

You need to wake up man. This is always overlooked. The real answer was because Europe feared the escallation of Yougoslavia to involve Europe. We attacked Iraq to force the battle ground to be there and not over here. Just .... like ..... you did. So let's look at the results of both of OUR wars.

Iraq is only in it's second year and today more people have electricity and public services than they did at the start of the war. More clean water and better sanitary conditions are available to the public at large and progress continues. Better and more medical care is available to the public at large today. Government is developing with the hope of uniting. Bet you don't hear or read that now do ya?

Let's look at Europes example for reconstruction in the Baltics. Unfortunately, results there have not been as good. Today after 10 years, less people today have public services than they did at the start of the war. There is no hope for troop pull out without the waring factions breaking down again because nothing was ever settled. Yougoslavia is gone forever. But .... I should be fair and give Europe another 10 years even though Europe is impatient with us and Iraq at .... two?

What's the difference? Well it's pretty plain to me. A sword can be made to cut both ways. Europe's only support for the Palistinian or any other Arab cause is because they are more dependent on their oil than we are. When it comes to imperialism and colonialism the US isn't even in the big three. Which is all European by the way. Great history you have with the arab world yourself. And we won't mention Europes demonstrated feelings for Jew's.

So please don't throw that racist remark around to quick cause you might find it a boomerang and it commin right back at you. Remember, we got everything from you even the word.

[NVcurmudgeon]

It is well to remember that there are neither absolute good guys nor absolute bad guys. Instead we should consider the interests of our guys and the other guys. General Patton had a shrewd grasp of this issue.

Racism? It was not an American that originated the phrase, "Wogs begin at Calais." My family points with pride to Sergeant Major William Mavity (Ma Vete in France), 2nd BN, Fourth Virginia. My 8X great grandfather was one of the "Wogs" who enjoyed the British band playing "The World Turned Upside Down" at Yorktown.

Red Indians? We have them in the family as well as French and many other contributions from the great American melting pot. People just go where the opportunities are, after two or three centuries there's no telling who all we're related to.

[9.3X62AL]

People just go where the opportunities are, after two or three centuries there's no telling who all we're related to.[/QUOTE]

Pretty much my take on the issue, Bill. Winners get first shot at writing the history books, let's remember.