by flory
So this whole budget deficit thingey has got so scary that President Carebear is even willing to go out on a limb and cut defense spending!!!
Calm down....nobody is really serious here. What they really mean is they're ready to fuck over the troops. That's pretty clear right up front:
To make ends meet, Mr. Gates also announced that he would seek to recoup billions of dollars by increasing fees paid by retired veterans under 65 for Defense Department health insurance...
Cutting up to 47,000 troops from the Army and Marine Corps forces
The above are in the first five paragraphs of the story. You have read down to paragraph 17 to find out that they recognize there might be some graft and waste in the budget. Note the weasel wording -- they've identified $54 billion -- they're not necessarily going to do anything about it:
Separately, the Defense Department bureaucracy had identified about $54 billion more, from things like reducing contractor hiring, freezing personnel rolls, reducing the number of generals and admirals and closing or consolidating headquarters
Here's a suggestion: Fire Xie and Halliburton and let those 47,000 troops you're planning to leave hanging do the work the US military handled for 225 years, until Donald Rumsfeld decided the true priority for defense spending was enriching his friends.