via Defense Official: Obama Calling for Defense Budget Cuts – Presidential Politics | Political News – FOXNews.com.
FOXNews.com
Friday, January 30, 2009
The Obama administration has asked the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to cut the Pentagon’s budget request for the fiscal year 2010 by more than 10 percent — about $55 billion — a senior U.S. defense official tells FOX News.
Last year’s defense budget was $512 billion. Service chiefs and planners will be spending the weekend “burning the midnight oil” looking at ways to cut the budget — looking especially at weapons programs, the defense official said.
Some overall budget figures are expected to be announced Monday.
Obama met Friday at the White House with a small group of military advisers, including Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman, and Gen. Jim Jones, National Security Council chairman.
It’s about time the defense budget came under scrutiny. We have lavished the military under Bush to the point that every project they wanted got funded. I say reduce the numbers of the military now that Iraq is winding down, but I am a peace freak.
Last year’s defense budget was $512 billion not counting the occupation of Iraq and action in Afghanistan. Those two defense related activities operated on a completely different set of books during the Bush administration.
What FOX didn’t mention the good governance that came out of the meeting, of course. FOX only covered the hot-button negativity of defense cuts that will get the Republican base riled, as usual. This from the LA Times:
Obama meets with Joint Chiefs at Pentagon
He says afterward that fighting extremists is the top priority in Afghanistan but that he would increase involvement of civilian U.S. agencies in governance, justice, agriculture and other fields.
By Julian E. Barnes
January 29, 2009
Reporting from Washington — President Obama said after meeting with top U.S. military leaders Wednesday that targeting extremists would be a top priority for the armed forces in Afghanistan.
President Obama greets military personnel
Obama met for nearly two hours with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the secure Pentagon conference room known as Tank. He emerged to shake hands with troops and promised to increase the involvement of civilian U.S. government agencies to work on governance, agriculture, civil justice and other issues in Afghanistan. The pledge addresses a long-standing Pentagon complaint.
I was in favor of doing the same thing with Iraq at the beginning of the illegal occupation. Their transition from dictatorship to democracy would have gone much smoother if we had had a civilian package consisting of cabinet departments such as Agriculture, Commerce, and State ready to hit the ground and organize the governemt. Barack couldn’t be more right about this.
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