DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Presidental Debate Part 2.

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One can actually argue the marines themselves are under the Navy though.

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No, you can't argue it... they ARE under the Department of the Navy.

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Oh I like you Navy boys just fine, every time we need to go somewhere to fight, you Navy boys give us a ride.

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This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everybody wants some mythical 3rd party guy to appear that has a shot but nobody wants to donate and follow one until he has a shot.. therefore they rise up and quickly flame out due to lack of funding and support.

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On a side note, did any of you see the new destroyer being developed?

I'm done derailing the thread after this.

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I think that Romney actually wound up winning the debate. He made Obama look small in many ways. The Apology tour for example.Wow .......holy psychic friends network Batman, this is on TV right now. Anyway, as they just said on TV .... Obama said "Ask any reporter" ..... which is a really small comment in such a large debate.

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Yeah, not sure how this "apology tour" thing is still getting time in debates:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/...ck-obama-began/
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/romneys-sorry-apology-tour-dig/
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/obamas_apology_tour.html

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On a side note, did any of you see the new destroyer being developed?

I'm done derailing the thread after this.

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What's the class name?

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But, hey. We're all about small, limited government around here.

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wiki page

just how much is too much....

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wiki page

just how much is too much....

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That depends upon what your goals for that force are.
If all you are concerned about is coastal protection and defense.... you can get by with a LOT LESS.

If your goals are to protect the shipping lanes of the world - ya know, to protect every link in our economy - and projection of power ashore to be able to support deployed forces.... then you might need a little bit more than you are willing to agree to.



p.s. our Navy follows the second goal, everybody else follows the first. Come back with a comparison that is apples-to-apples and then re-ask.

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I would argue the AF follows the second goal as well.

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I'm not exactly sure the grunts will be the first cut. First, they don't make a whole lot of money. Second, many branches, especially the AF, are extremely officer heavy. I think they'll look to retire more O's than E's.

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That depends upon what your goals for that force are.
If all you are concerned about is coastal protection and defense.... you can get by with a LOT LESS.

If your goals are to protect the shipping lanes of the world - ya know, to protect every link in our economy - and projection of power ashore to be able to support deployed forces.... then you might need a little bit more than you are willing to agree to.

p.s. our Navy follows the second goal, everybody else follows the first. Come back with a comparison that is apples-to-apples and then re-ask.

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I understand it's a big number and there is a lot of fat in the military budget... but those calling for massive cuts to the military better have a plan of how they are going to deal with the nearly 3 million active duty and reserve personnel who make all or part of their living by military income.. then figure out what you are going to do with the other millions of civilians who make their living on or near military bases, making these weapons systems, etc.. then figure out how you are going to teach marketable skills and responsibility to the many high school kids who go into the military for just that reason because they can't go to college...

If people think that cutting the military budget is going to cause them to not buy the latest and greatest weapons, they are fooling themselves.. the first thing that will be cut is people. And the people that will be cut first are the grunts, the boots on the ground, the lowest level soldier... the people who will be kept are the techies, the ones who can sit in a bunker in Kansas and launch computer guided missiles to hit a sheep standing in a field in Afghanistan. Like it or not, the US military is the single biggest source of job training for lower income young men and women in this country.... they leave with a skill, they leave with the opportunity to go on to college if they want and have the government pay for it... and that will be one of the first things that gets cut.

Our military budget does need to be cut, but it needs to be drawn down slowly over a period of about 30 years... forgetting national security for a second, major cuts to the military would have devastating effects on our economy, especially in some of the areas that have grown up around the military and especially to the lower income people who view it as a way to get a job and attain a skill....

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I understand it's a big number and there is a lot of fat in the military budget... but those calling for massive cuts to the military better have a plan of how they are going to deal with the nearly 3 million active duty and reserve personnel who make all or part of their living by military income.. then figure out what you are going to do with the other millions of civilians who make their living on or near military bases, making these weapons systems, etc.. then figure out how you are going to teach marketable skills and responsibility to the many high school kids who go into the military for just that reason because they can't go to college...

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smaller, quicker, more flexible should be the US manta,

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There are about 1.5 million active duty servicemen, not sure where the 3 million figure comes from.

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We really are an outlier in comparison to the rest of the world.

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not trying to be too snarky (maybe a little) but I thought "the government doesn't create jobs"?

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They (government) does not...the military does though.

The issue is that government jobs are paid for with US tax dollars. It's like buying yourself a birthday present. Those jobs should exist in areas where the private sector can not or will not perform.

The military is the single most applicable area(s) where the private sector can not or will not perform. The need for the military creates the need for those jobs.

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A Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute says the idea that government spending can create jobs “has a rather glaring logical fallacy. It overlooks the fact that, in the real world, government can’t inject money into the economy without first taking money out of the economy.” This argument is wrong for several reasons.

First, the government can inject money into the economy. It does so whenever it finances its spending by selling bonds to the Federal Reserve. In this case, money is created by the Federal Reserve when it buys the bonds. It creates a reserve account on its books; money is thus created without any reduction in money elsewhere in the economy.

Alternatively, the government can finance its spending by taxes or by selling bonds to the public. This is the case envisioned by the Cato analysis. The argument is that the money spent by the government is exactly balanced by a reduction in money in the pockets of taxpayers of bond buyers. However, if the taxpayers’ or the bond buyers’ money would otherwise have been saved and not spent, then there is a net injection into the economy of funds that can put people to work.

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Where does that logic break down when it comes to the military? The argument should be - "if the military saves money by cutting 500,000 jobs, then the money it saves will be reinserted back into the economy, where private business will create more jobs than the military did". That logic doesn't change, just because the type of job changes - you aren't going to convince me that military spending is more efficient than any other part of government spending.

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They (government) does not...the military does though.

The issue is that government jobs are paid for with US tax dollars. It's like buying yourself a birthday present. Those jobs should exist in areas where the private sector can not or will not perform.

The military is the single most applicable area(s) where the private sector can not or will not perform. The need for the military creates the need for those jobs.

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Do you have any idea how many contractors and sub contarctors our governemnt/military had and has working in Iraq? They are jobs openned up via military means no matter how you try to divide the two. They are intertwined.

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Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq

There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.

The survey finding, which includes Americans, Iraqis and third-party nationals hired by companies operating under U.S. government contracts, is significantly higher and wider in scope than the Pentagon's only previous estimate, which said there were 25,000 security contractors in the country.

It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers.

Official numbers are difficult to find, said Deborah D. Avant, author of the 2005 book "The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security," but an estimated 9,200 contractors deployed during the Gulf War, a far shorter conflict without reconstruction projects. "This is the largest deployment of U.S. contractors in a military operation," said Avant, an associate professor at George Washington University.

In addition to about 140,000 U.S. troops, Iraq is now filled with a hodgepodge of contractors. DynCorp International has about 1,500 employees in Iraq, including about 700 helping train the police force. Blackwater USA has more than 1,000 employees in the country, most of them providing private security. Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. MPRI, a unit of L-3 Communications, has about 500 employees working on 12 contracts, including providing mentors to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for strategic planning, budgeting and establishing its public affairs office. Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country.

The Pentagon's latest estimate "further demonstrates the need for Congress to finally engage in responsible, serious and aggressive oversight over the questionable and growing U.S. practice of private military contracting," said Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has been critical of the military's reliance on contractors.

About 650 contractors have died in Iraq since 2003, according to Labor Department statistics.

Central Command, which conducted the census, said a breakdown by nationality or job description was not immediately available because the project is still in its early stages. "This is the first time we have initiated a census of this robustness," Lt. Col. Julie Wittkoff, chief of the contracting branch at Central Command, said in an interview. Those figures do not include subcontractors, which could substantially grow the figure.

In June, government agencies were asked to provide data about contractors working for them in Iraq, including their nationality, a description of their work and locations where they were working. The information was provided by more than a dozen entities within the Pentagon and a dozen outside agencies, including the departments of State and Interior, Wittkoff said. The count increased about 15 percent from about 87,000 since Central Command began keeping a tally this summer, she said, though the increase may reflect ongoing data collection efforts. The census will be updated quarterly, Wittkoff said.

Three years into the war, the headcount represents one of the Pentagon's most concrete efforts so far toward addressing the complexities and questions raised by the large numbers of civilians who have flooded into Iraq to work. With few industry standards, the military and contractors have sometimes lacked coordination, resulting in friendly fire incidents, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year.

"It takes a great deal of vigilance on the part of the military commander to ensure contractor compliance," said William L. Nash, a retired Army general and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "If you're trying to win hearts and minds and the contractor is driving 90 miles per hour through the streets and running over kids, that's not helping the image of the American army. The Iraqis aren't going to distinguish between a contractor and a soldier."

The census gives military commanders insight into the contractors operating in their region and the type of work they are doing, Wittkoff said. "It helps the combatant commanders have a better idea of . . . food and medical requirements they may need to provide to support the contractors," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120401311.html

Yeah, the military has nothing to do with government jobs all-right....

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Do you have any idea how many contractors and sub contarctors our governemnt/military had and has working in Iraq? They are jobs openned up via military means no matter how you try to divide the two. They are intertwined.

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Yeah, the military has nothing to do with government jobs all-right....

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So we are paying a guy who would make $40K in the US, $100K to go to Iraq and work to build stuff so that at the end of the day, Iraq can have new bridges, water treatment plants, schools and we will have nothing... That sounds about right when it comes to the effectiveness of the government created jobs.

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I think my point is:

"Using the same government dollars, why does hiring a guy to blow up Iraq (your words, not mine) create jobs, but hiring a guy to fix highways in Utah doesn't?"

I understand the argument for "the government doesn't create jobs", and I understand the argument for "the military creates jobs" but they seem incompatible.

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"Using the same government dollars, why does hiring a guy to blow up Iraq (your words, not mine) create jobs,

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So we are paying a guy who would make $40K in the US, $100K to go to Iraq and work to build stuff so that at the end of the day, Iraq can have new bridges, water treatment plants, schools and we will have nothing... That sounds about right when it comes to the effectiveness of the government created jobs.

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Not at all. When you hire a contracror or sub contarctor, you pay no SS matching funds, no umemployment, no health care, no vacations, no benifit package, no GI Bill for education.

When you actually think it through with the high number of disability cases from this war, in the long haul, the governemnt is really taking the cheap way out.

And I can see how working in a war zone would be apples to apples to working here at home.

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"Using the same government dollars, why does hiring a guy to blow up Iraq (your words, not mine) create jobs,

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Those aren't my words.

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When you hire a contracror or sub contarctor, you pay no SS matching funds, no umemployment, no health care, no vacations, no benifit package, no GI Bill for education.

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