DOD Official Admits Own Talking Points Pushing Back On Military Cuts Are ‘Not Accurate (TP)

[chill_wind]

And some of us here knew it, and pushed right back at the time. When those same "devastating Pentagon budget cuts" talking points were being pushed right here at DU, after the deficit ceiling ordeal:

DOD Official Admits Own Talking Points Pushing Back On Military Cuts Are ‘Not Accurate’

By Ben Armbruster on Sep 2, 2011 at 2:55 pm

The Washington Post reports today that the Defense Department is cooking up a communications strategy to push back against calls for more reductions in military spending in anticipation of the battle over budget cuts in Washington.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has already been quite vocal, saying — without offering any evidence — that the $600 billion cuts in national security spending that would result if the debt ceiling deal’s so-called trigger mechanism takes effect would be a “doomsday mechanism,” “dangerous,” and “devastating.”

The Post reports that according to internal memos, the Pentagon will rely on a similar strategy but also offer some specifics, namely that the trigger scenario would result in “only enough force presence for two theaters and 1.5 major conflicts,” as well as “the smallest Navy fleet since 1915.” But as the Post notes, this simply isn’t true:

Both claims are highly misleading, if not downright false. In its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon concluded that it no longer made strategic sense to prepare to fight two major conventional wars at the same time, but rather to plan for a variety of conflicts of different sizes.

more at Think Progress: http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/09/02/311207/dod-talking-points-military-cuts-not-accurate/

[glowing]

1. Let's take a wild guess and say its a Bush buried left over.. or

one of the other Republicans (Reagan or Bush I).

[chill_wind]

2. Actually it was Panetta who was crying the loudest

but it took him a few days to decide to do it.

He had been preceded by what amounted to a sigh of relief in the Army Times' editorial on the cuts, which already been analyzed, making his claims and cries quite specious sounding in the face of what had already been publicized.

This was one of the reports we linked here at DU at the time:

Under the new plan, up to $350 billion of the initial $900 billion in cuts to discretionary spending would come from the Pentagon’s budget over the next 10 years. This is $50 billion less than the defense cuts President Obama outlined in April.

Byron Callan, a senior defense analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, said cuts of this size have been expected for months.

“We thus see no net change for defense, as we have believed that most defense stocks have discounted a DoD budget cut between $400 to $800 billion over the next 10 years,” Callan wrote in an Aug. 1 email.

(snip)

Even if the deal leads to cutting the full $850 billion from the Pentagon, that’s still less than recommended by two recent bipartisan debt panels

Debt deal in line with DoD budget expectations
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/08/defense-spending-expectations-largely-unchanged-by-debt-deal-080111/

Panetta the politician was just doing his political schtick.

Here's the WAPO link from the Think Progress article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/pentagons-communications-shop-girding-for-battle-over-military-spending/2011/09/02/gIQAnZIpwJ_blog.html#pagebreak

"In an interview, Brian P. Cullin, director of communication planning and integration for the Pentagon’s public affairs office and one of the authors of the talking points, said the document was only a draft and that the claims “haven’t survived” further review. “They’re not accurate,” he acknowledged. “We didn’t think we could responsibly say that.”

He said the talking points and an accompanying memo titled, “Defense Budget Q&A,” were “very rough” attempts to prepare defense officials for the ongoing public debate over military spending. “It’s basically that we wanted to make some attempt to try to organize our communications,” he said."

Sounds like Doomsday Crier Panetta decided to run with them, anyway.

[classysassy]

3. China and Russia

must be laughing their heads off at the dumb Americans destroying their economy so they can enrich the very criminals that Ike warned us about.Wake up America the greed is so wide spreed if left unchecked we will become an easy target for our enemies.We already have enough weapons to defend the homeland and our allies,but we keep spending our tax money for more weapons we don't need.We need to spend more on health care,schools,job creation,enforcement of our laws that protect the average citizens against the greed of the wealthy criminals,return the jobs sent overseas,censure the lies that go out over our airways,rid this country of the frauds in our government(the unelected clowns that make our laws a joke).All great countries have fallen for lack of sane governance are we on the verge of destroying ourselves?

[chill_wind]

4. Trade-offs just for 2012 (tragic in magnitude)

Taxpayers in The United States will pay $553.0 billion for proposed Department of Defense for FY2012. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided:

283.5 million Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year
OR
8.1 million Elementary School Teachers for One Year
OR
9.3 million Firefighters for One Year
OR
72.8 million Head Start Slots for Children for One Year
OR
238.5 million Households with Renewable Electricity - Solar Photovoltaic for One Year
OR
500.9 million Households with Renewable Electricity-Wind Power for One Year
OR
70.9 million Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year
OR
113.7 million People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year
OR
8.0 million Police or Sheriff's Patrol Officers for One Year
OR
70.1 million Scholarships for University Students for One Year
OR
99.6 million Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

http://nationalpriorities.org/en/tools/tradeoffs/state/US/program/14/tradeoff/0