Russian aggression will make Pentagon cuts a harder sell

[sarisataka]

WASHINGTON - While headline claims of a Cold War resurgence are surely overstated, Russia’s aggression in Ukraine reminds Pentagon policymakers that their plans to shift U.S. military focus away from Europe may have to be tweaked.

Previously announced Pentagon spending cuts will still be included in the budget President Obama sends Congress on Tuesday. But they now face an even harder sell on Capitol Hill, where home-state interests and election-year politics often prevail along with a bipartisan predilection for bombast.

Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, blamed Obama for having already cut projected Pentagon funding by $487 ­billion over 10 years.

“His disarming of America over the past five years limits our options in Ukraine today,” Inhofe said in a statement Monday.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/248298041.html
Once again "It's Obama's fault"

[TwilightGardener]

1. How did Obama "disarm" America over the past five years, Inhofe, you senile

piece of shit? The Pentagon budget is capped by CONGRESS, anyway--they voted for sequester and refuse to lift it for 2016. If they don't like it, they can reverse it--but they'd rather blame Obama. Edit to add: the new budget makes sense, unless Inhofe thinks we're going to occupy Ukraine, the dumbfuck.

[moondust]

2. Yup. The warmongers will be all over this.

I imagine McCain's war profiteering buddies are pushing him real hard to take full advantage of this opportunity to get a big new war going to replace the two cash cows they have lost--thanks to Obama.

[RKP5637]

3. The MIC will be all over this for more and more $$$$$! Death, destruction, mutilations mean

big $$$$$ for the MIC!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. There's nothing like a skeery bogeyman to make the MIC (and, politicians) smile.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.  H.L. Mencken

[FarCenter]

5. It is to Russia's advantage to make the US spend more on defense

That is the strategy that Al Qaeda has used to great advantage.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. All I will say on this is I called it

next, the A-10 rises from the ashes of the cutting table. (They have armor)

Oh and this has zero to do with Inhofe by the way, he is just the parrot right at the moment.

[Historic NY]

7. Really like were going to fight a conventional war...

with Russia. Next thing you know will be building bases all over europe again and starting an arms race.