"Slow The Development Of Future Combat Systems"

Obama could successfully argue for slowing the development of new weapon systems so long as the slowdown helped fund the war effort by adequately supplying the troops with armor, or perhaps improving the recruitment incentives. Make it about the troops vs big business.

You might also imagine applying many of the arguments seen here about aerospace dinosaurs applied to the weapons contractors. (Don't they have the same corporate address?) We need new launch systems but we don't need a new STS type program, and we need new weapons, but we don't need a B-2 bomber type weapon...

Even if McCain wins, I can't see him doing it without it being very close.

It looks to me like Obama should be way to far to the left to win a general election in the US. But it also seems like tons of people love him, and the mass media is going to do everything it can to paint all his positions as "moderate."

I'd like to think it would be a Dukakis thing--he was way up in the polls, he had the "Massachusetts Miracle" (which turned out not to be), and it looked like a walk-in. The more people learned the less they liked.

What bugs me most is that we end up with a global warming true believer either way. Maybe with McCain we could persuade him to "fight global warming" in ways that would be beneficial (or at least not harmful), rather than buying into the leftest take on everything. Nuclear power and, perhaps, tax incentives for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles might not damage the economy the way "cap and trade" or other carbon-reduction laws might.

I can see reasonable concern that we are developing expensive weapon systems that aren't worth their cost and aren't a good fit for us. But I don't see what need will be served by merely delaying them. And he says a lot more about reducing US's war readiness, eg, reducing nuclear forces again and some sort of military spending cuts. While I see as necessary considerable spending cuts in the military from current levels, I am suspicious of someone who just promises it. I don't have the sense that this has been well-thought out. Even if it were and were the right thing to do even (if somehow we could know that), there's a very good chance that he can't deliver. The House controls the purse strings after all.

It's a winning plank in libertarian land. Certainly Obama isn't libertarian on all issues, maybe not on most issues. But he is libertarian on this issue. He thinks that this part of the government is too big; you think that it's too small. You trust this part of the government; he doesn't.

You should consider this wisdom paraphrased from the libertarian Thomas Paine: Many people think that governments raise spending to win wars, but more often they raise wars to win spending.

Does Obama have a winning platform? We report, you decide.

If you want to make a major shift to butter, there are a bunch of different ways to approach buying fewer guns. Reducing personnel might be the best policy, but it has loud critics just today. The next best policy might be to keep future systems at the research stage a little longer so that there can be more advances that can be incorporated into them before going into design and procurement. One might be able to skip a minor upgrade. Skipping a whole weapon system is a way to cut costs more, but leaves one with a system functioning far after its useful life. Accelerating labor and logistics saving/leveraging technologies like arsenal ships and teleoperated guns and tanks may be a great investment, but if they are too good and too easy, they risk creating narrowing the US lead in technology rather than widening it.

"Does Obama have a winning platform? We report, you decide."

By far the most accurate poll and the one with the largest and best screened sample, Rasmussen, has had McCain several points ahead for the past week and a half.

Add another three points in there for the Bradley effect and Obama may be in more trouble that you think.

The press isn't going to be any better for Obama than it is today. When the lefty nutz stuff like Rand has ponted out (not to mention he said he wants to eliminate our nuclear arsenal) makes general circulation, it is only going to go lower.

That youtube link will be over half the country within a week.

Whe the public finds out he is a radical leftist, he is going to go lower still.

I am begining to think Hillary might really be the dems best shot.

Wait, wasn't that what transformation was all about?

We had a "peace dividend" in the 90s and didn't invest in new platforms, so FCS was supposed to take a calculated risk and jump a generation to keep us in the lead.

Of course, FCS was predicated on the types of conflicts that we faced in the 80s and 90s, and the technology just hasn't been there to meet its most important and ambitious goals (air-mechanization, "active" armor, etc.).

At this point, it seems as though our M-1s will be older than most of their crewmen before we even begin to replace them. So it goes in the sky and sea as well.

I am begining to think Hillary might really be the dems best shot.

Yeah, right, because she's losing.

I think that it would be fantastic if McCain took Fred Thompson as his running mate. A wax model of Reagan is just what his campaign needs. To sink its chances, that is. It's a good thing too that Thompson doesn't have fire in the belly --- he'd melt.

McCain does deserve great credit for this though: he admits that water boarding is torture. He's on the other side of the argument from Bush, Cheney, Goss, and Torquemada. One way or another, this stain on America's reputation will remit in November.

FCS was supposed to take a calculated risk and jump a generation to keep us in the lead.

Look, there are two theories as to why we are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan even though we have superior firepower. One theory is that we need even more superior firepower, to be invented by the best minds at Boeing and SAIC. The other theory is that our firepower is as superior as it needs to be, and that the real problem in Iraq and Afghanistan is confused objectives. Which theory you believe depends on how much you trust the government.

Okay, there is a third theory that we're not actually bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan; our objectives certainly aren't confused; and the main reason we haven't pushed the front line into Iran is that we have been slowed down by defeatists, cowards, America-haters, and so-called "liberals". If you really trust the government and its most cynical operatives a lot, and if you lost your critical-thinking skills somewhere in your garage, then you might believe this theory.

"I am begining to think Hillary might really be the dems best shot.

Yeah, right, because she's losing."

Either one is likely to lose to McCain. Hilary has emlted about as far as she can. She is at her bottom, Obama is at his peak and quitel possible will implode.

Obama is a left wing extremist, his facade is already wearing thin.

To take a quote from Christine: "Ya know Pepper, ya can't polish a turd."

Obama could successfully argue for slowing the development of new weapon systems so long as the slowdown helped fund the war effort by adequately supplying the troops with armor, or perhaps improving the recruitment incentives.

That has already happened. Contrary to popular rhetoric, military spending has been highly constrained for items not directly related to current combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You might also imagine applying many of the arguments seen here about aerospace dinosaurs applied to the weapons contractors. (Don't they have the same corporate address?) We need new launch systems but we don't need a new STS type program, and we need new weapons, but we don't need a B-2 bomber type weapon...

But no one is arguing for new launch systems in order to *slow down* space development. Quite the opposite.

Your comparison would make sense if Obama were calling for the better, faster, cheaper weapons development, but he isn't.

Somebody call the nurse and have Jim take his medication again. Then, maybe he'll be able to understand that FCS and transformation in general pre-date Iraq (and, for the most part, 9/11). The initial success in Afghanistan appeared to validate the concept, but it just plain has never been sufficiently defined or vetted as an idea, so it has bogged down. It's not just the army that doesn't really know what it wants to do; the navy is running out of ships because they don't have much of a shipbuilding plan.

As for Iraq--the enemy always gets a vote, unless they're dead. The enemy (well, several of them, including AQ) decided to launch a counteroffensive in Iraq, rather than ceding it. They were most definitely aided in this decision (how many times do we have to be told how we "fled" Vietnam and Somalia for it to count?) by those over here who demanded our defeat. Doesn't mean we would have "won the peace" in 6 months otherwise--but, it might have given us a much stronger chance.

That said, it's entirely possible that we will wind up securing a strategic victory over AQ in Iraq precisely because they chose to fight us there. By publicly killing and terrorizing innocent Arab civilians en masse week after week, they slowly chipped away at their own projected image as defenders of Islam against the West. If you bothered to go back and read what Rand and others were saying during our year-long "rush to war", you might notice that smashing that image by providing a growing democracy that could counter it was one of the key reasons many of us supported it. So, it might work out that we achieve exactly what we had hoped for in the beginning, only with a higher price over there and no further losses (knock on wood) over here so far.

Whew that video snippet cured me of any positive attitude towards Obama. He's pure suicide and he doesn't realize (they never do which of course is the tragedy of it).

"Third" is the biggest one. I've heard this nonsense from all kinds of idiotarians since growing up during the cold war. It never sounds good, it never sounds sane, it's a message spelling out p-l-e-a-s-e-k-i-l-l-u-s.

I'm astonished nobody else have said it so I am going to: I think that video consisting solely of Obama saying what he intends to do made it close to certain someone will kill him before inauguration if elected.

Hang on and calm down. Obama was not making a general statement about disinvesting in future military preparedness. He was referring to a very specific Pentagon development effort called 'Future Combat Systems' McCain has also opposed it - repeatedly. Only now McCain chooses to distort that truth in order to confuse the voters. Proof? Check out the radical left-wing Army Times: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/defense_mccain_FCS_091208/