Trump chooses mattis for secdef!!!

An Irrelevant and nonsense argument. "We spend more then other people so that means we're bad!" Yeah that doesn't work.

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The article is irrelevant to you insulting the military and it's service men, which you clearly did in the quote I gave you.

 

Just like the Israelis are bad because they always loose less people in war than their enemy

 

I never used the word bad. The word I would use is wasteful.

 

I think we can be pretty certain that Don will only do stuff if it's in America's interest..
He's already become chums with Putin and Assad, so perhaps he's thinking about getting rid of ISIS so that Assad will cut him and America in for a share of Syria's oil when things settle down.

 

Your comments on oil are ridiculous. There is a world market in oil. Nothing we do with Syria will change that.

Besides, Syria doesn't have enough oil to pay for the damage done in the combined bombings of Assad and the many others who have been pounding Syria's citizes to dust for a LONG time now. If anything, Syria will need aid.

Today, analysts don't believe there is a way to eliminate ISIS without a change in government in Syria. Assad is NOT our friend. W put him on the "regime change" list in 2001, and he was right.

 

There are many benefits to a strong military. Off the top of my head.
Added leverage in diplomatic affairs
Strategic flexibility
Makes for cautious adversaries

 

Downside:
Huge cost
The strong desire to test out new equipment on a real battlefield
More dead american heroes

 

Syria has got oil, so it all depends how badly Don wants some of it; maybe he'll decide the amount is too small to make it worthwhile putting American boots on the ground to smash ISIS.
Oil industry experts predict oil will run out "sometime this century", and when that happens we'll have nothing to make our tanks, warplanes and warships GO, which is why the Western govts have been involved in the mideast for years trying to get their hands on every last drop, because when it runs out we'll have to resort to fighting with stone age technology, right General?

"Ugh"

 

I favor cost cutting, We need to cut costs across the board.
Romantic wishful thinking. There are very few if any real leaders in our military that desire war.
I don't get the dead Heroes unless you mean deaths in training. Otherwise i would point out a stronger military will likely result in fewer dead heroes should there be a war.

 

If you build it they will come. There is no way to have a giant army and not use it a lot. There is to much pressure to justify the cost. Use it a lot = more dead american heroes.

 

No. We fight to ensure that the global market in oil is not upset. If it were, it would be of catastrophic impact across many nations, resulting in economic chaos and an end to peace.

Today, we pump as much of our oil as we can without driving its value to zero. If we were concerned about some future world with no oil, we would have very different policy both on extraction and on use.

For example, if someone actually thought our supply isn't infinite, that person would surely demand that we start working on exactly the same things we would need to do in order to reduce our impact on climate change.

But, today we leave research and innovation in alternative energy technology as something for China to do - which they are very happy to do!!

 

If you are making a case to reduce the US military presence globally i "could" be on-board with that. Let Nato/Japan be the regional cops. Let the middle east sort out their own issues, Let Africa, well ... be Africa, ect. Our greatest strategic advantage is our geographic location. Two shores and 2 friendly border allies. As long as we have the worlds most powerful navy we are safe from invasion and can maintain sea trade routes.

 

That sounds just like Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time"!

 

But Trump says he doesn't want to protect them anymore so we can have a smaller military instead. Obviously Trump must be lying if he wants to increase the military while doing less with it.

 

What I posted was a factual summation of the FBI report. It did not insult military personal and no amount of gainsaying on your part is going to alter those facts.

 

All of the above already exists with the current size of the military. Making it larger just increases the burden on taxpayers and pushes up the National Debt. Speaking of which that gives China leverage over America. Why give them even more leverage?

 

The US military has been on the cutting edge of adopting alternative energies because it doesn't want to caught short when oil runs out. Obviously they understand the problem better than Trump does.

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If you favor cost cutting then slashing the military budget in half would go a very long way to making that happen without any loss of defense effectiveness.

 

It is logistically impossible to successfully invade the continental USA from the sea or the air using conventional tactics.

 

The nuclear option applies to the confirmation vote. We aren't near that yet. This is about the LAW that requires he be retired for at least 7 years. Mattis has only been 3 I believe. That is a Congressional law that requires that not the Constitution. The Senate STILL has the filibuster when it is a LAW that is in question. They can filibuster the vote to waive the LAW. Now maybe they got some little know long forgotten wiggle room but I don't see where that is. Without the waiver he can't move into consideration. The waiver vote concerns a law that would be subject to cloture rules AFAIK and have heard discussed on several forums.

 

Yes and great deference should be given to a President's cabinet selections as they make up HIS cabinet. They are the selection of the people he needs to work with him on his policies. That as opposed to the Justices who serve in the third branch of government equal to the Congress and the President and who are appointed for life and can only be impeached, the President nor the Congress can merely fire them they have to be impeached.

 

Well if you can get all our enemies to agree they will only attack us one at a time and give us time between countries to rearm and replenish maybe we can shrink it some.

 

Please explain the logistics of landing a couple of million fully armed and supplied troops on the US mainland from across the Pacific and don't forget to explain how to maintain the resupply and reinforcements of this landing party.

 

Thank you, that was my point. Our Navy insures it.

 

Except that we don't need an even larger navy since the current one is already more than effective.

 

Your first one is obviously going to be something that is true with such things. Nobody said it's all easy and free with no negative sides to it.

The other two are absolute nonsense with the second one bordering on tinfoil hat conspiracy ludicrousness.

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Do I need to require what you said AGAIN? There was a least 2 direct insults towards are military one of which had nothing to do with the gang crap.

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Meh. Technically wasteful is bad. But I digress. My point still stands. The "we spend more then everyone else" argument is foolish.