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Opening Arguments

We're not ready

"Shocking"? Yeah, that's about right. Not, alas, surprising, though:

While the president of the United States pitched his crumbling healthcare program like a late-night infomercial barker, the Army's chief of staff made a shocking admission about national defense.

Gen. Ray Odierno told a Washington conference Monday that the U.S. Army had not conducted any training in the last six months of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

And, he said, there currently are only two Army brigades rated combat-ready. That's a total of between 7,000 to 10,000 troops and less than one-third what the combat veteran regards as necessary for proper national security.

"Right now," Odierno said, "we have in the Army two brigades that are trained. That's it. Two."

The writer puts the blame on the Army having to "obey Obama administration orders to drastically cut the Army and military spending and meet cuts under sequestration." While I'll never miss an opportunity to bash Obama, the sequestration was an act of bipartisan incompetence, and Congress has to take its share of the blame.
 
I'm always a fan of cutting government spending, and the overall total of the sequsestration was not drastic -- hell, it wasn't even a real cut, just a decrease in the proposed increase. But to throw national security on the scrap heap is more than incompetent. It's criminal negligence to leave this country less than ready to defend itself.
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