[jyl]

Originally posted by fintstone
No, it was brilliant and appears to be working well.

I guess your rose-colored glasses are firmly glued on. You are probably working on an argument that Bush's loss of the House and Senate was equally "brilliant". I actually can't recall anything controversial he's done that you haven't proclaimed brilliant.

Actually, I think Rumsfeld was great. He was just give a problem that was not solvable with the tools he was given.

He helped create the problem that he then failed to solve. As Sec'y of Def, he was central to the decision and planning of the war.

Spending has been relatively low by the only reasonable measure...as a percentage of GDP.

Compared to the WWII and Cold War periods, you are correct. Of course, today there is no Germany or USSR competing with us for global military domination. The runner-up, China, spends 1/7th our level. But if we need to spend more, we can do so.

Rumsfeld did not...and could not make the military either larger or smaller. Where do you get this stuff?

Rumsfeld opposed efforts to increase the troop strength in Iraq, both in the initial invasion and throughout the occupation. He also opposed Congressional efforts to increase the authorized size of the military. He was worried that feeding 50K more soldiers would take money away from his high-tech programs. Background: http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0517/p01s01-usmi.html

The only problem is that you have never told us where the troops would come from. We already have the maximum that Congress will allow. You have decried military spending...what would we pay them with?...do you think the draft should be reinstated?

Have I decried military spending? I don't see that.