No, the Pentagon Is NOT Cutting Army Budget to 1930s Levels: Media's Latest Big Lie Debunked

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http://www.alternet.org/media/no-pentagon-not-cutting-army-budget-1930s-levels-medias-latest-big-lie-debunked



On Monday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel unveiled his 2015 Pentagon budget in a detailed speech where he proposed spending $496 billion—about $45 billion less than the White House, retiring a tank-shooting aircraft and spy plane, cutting the army’s size from 520,000 to 450,000 troops, and trimming subsidies for military housing and health care.

The rationale was that after America’s longest overseas war, 11 years in Afghanistan and Iraq, the military had to balance downsizing and modernizing. The coverage that ensued was anything but rational. “Pentagon set to Slash Military to Pre-World War II Levels,” blared NBCNews.com. The New York Times, Reuters, NewsMax.com, FoxNews, Time, CNN all had headlines that the Army reduction was to “pre-World War II levels.”

Following the media’s lead, Republican congressmen and ex-generals on prime time TV, predictably vented. The Army was being “cut to the bone,” said Retired Gen. Jack Keane on Fox. “This is not the time for us to begin to retreat,” said Rep. Michael Turner, R-OH. “It’s all being sacrificed… on the altar of entitlements,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-TX.

Even experts that sought to defend a trend that has follow every big American war recited the “pre-World War II levels” trope. “The news that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will propose to cut the U.S. Army to pre-World War II levels is sure to generate much controversy,” wrote the WaPo’s David Edelstein, “despite the fact that the United States spends nearly five times as much on defense as the next country on the list.”