Bush III? NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Good point Scott.

Let me explain something to you non-DOD types.

The reason Rummy is so hated right now goes further back than you realize.

The military had such weak administrative oversight for so many years that the generals who floated up to the top were all politicians and knew little or nothing about warfare.

We were lucky during Desert Storm to have a leader who could run the war. On the other hand, Gen. Powell was nothing more than a politician.

Now that the military has strong oversight from the administration they are cleaning out the political generals and replacing them with generals who understand their jobs. This is upsetting a lot of high-ranking officers, but it is turning around the military and making it stronger.

THIS is the main reason there has been so much flack flying around.

Another four years of a Clinton in office will allow the politicians to float back up into the higher officer ranks again.

 

Noticed I was saying that could be her slogan for the Democrat nomination. Since I'm not a Democrat, I'll have no say in their nomination process.

Clinton did some good things after '94...after a GOP Congress was elected. They may have drug him along kicking and screaming but good things were done.

Maybe divided government works best after all.

 

In spite of some progress on social issues, I'd have to say you're right concerning spending and gov't size issues.

The only Dem I trust right now on foreign policy is Lieberman (sp?) though Biden had some intelligent thoughts on how to bring sustainable order to Iraq by dividing it into a confederacy of three autonomous regions.

 

From the inside, I personally feel that we have great system. The dual parties provide checks and balances. If you will notice it was both Democrats and Republicans who agreed with the Iraqi war. They knew the risks of not finding WMD's don't use this for an excuse. Any politician who didn't realize the possibility of not finding WMDs probably needs to be voted out due to lack of intelligence.

Democrats are for a larger government so even though we are DOD we can expect adequate funding to continue doing operations as required.

Under the Republicans we see that they like DOD, but smaller government. The Republicans do have a tendency to contract out what we build to private industry. Once a contract goes public it can never go back into the government--so, in reality it is the Republican party that is gutting DOD.

Do not take what I am saying wrong. I am simply making some points that a lot of people don't think about, but this does not mean that we do not pay attention to the moral values of the Republican party.

Bottom line....two parties...checks and balances....good government system.

The only thing that scares me is that a Democrat will get in office and be convinced that we need to pull out of Iraq before the Army is ready. Of course, maybe that is what they want...they want democracy to fail in Iraq so they can say "I told you so."