Robbing Americans to Pay for War

[Aglaopheme]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-led House is pushing ahead with a $611 billion defense policy bill that prohibits closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forbids the Pentagon from trimming the number of military bases and awards U.S. troops their largest pay raise in six years.

During his 2008 bid for president, Barack Obama pledged to close the detention facility at Guantanamo, which he called a recruiting tool for extremist groups. But Republicans and a number of Democrats repeatedly thwarted his goal over the ensuing years, arguing the prison was badly needed for housing suspected terrorists. The ban on closing the prison also includes a prohibition on moving Guantanamo detainees to secure facilities in the U.S.

President-elect Donald Trump has not only pledged to keep Guantanamo open, he said during the campaign that he wants to "load it up with some bad dudes."

The defense bill blocks the Pentagon's planned reductions in the number of active-duty troops by prohibiting the Army from falling below 476,000 active-duty soldiers — 16,000 more than Obama's defense budget had proposed. The bill also adds 7,000 service members to the Air Force and Marine Corps.

House and Senate negotiators who crafted the defense bill dropped a House plan to shift $18 billion from the emergency wartime spending account to pay for additional weapons and combat gear the Pentagon didn't request.

http://www.usnews.com/news/politics...es-ahead-with-611-billion-defense-policy-bill

 

[Conager]

Why do you want poor servicemen to be unemployed?

 

[JohnnySavage]

Why do you want poor servicemen to be unemployed?

We could cut our military in half and still defend the country. The problem is, the Department of Defense is really the Department of Offense. Stop gallivanting all over the world and take care of business here first.

 

[Nezhul]

Guantanamo is not just a prison. If the question was in just keeping some bad dudes isolated - there would be many ways to do so without any public attention and much cheaper too.
This prison is an instrument of fear. As well as the place where you could torture, maim and even dispose of certain people semi-officially, and no one will say a word because everyone got used to it. I'm not qualified to say if America really needs it, but apparently many people in the government think it does.

 

[Aglaopheme]

Oh I definitely concur that in sheer number of dollars the four trillion dollars does not go to the pool. Much less simply illegals.

The vast bulk of the unwashed masses of which I would consider myself a member of our cheated every day by our government that diminishes the value of our Labour and our savings by monetary policy that amounts to nothing short of erosion.

An awful lot of our deficit spending goes to enrich the well-connected. Whether that be a military contractor a well-connected union or absolute draft Four Bridges to nowhere. It does to our money and money supply what accretion and erosion due to land a little when a river moves from One bank to the other somebody gain some land somebody loses some land

Good point.

Why do you want poor servicemen to be unemployed?

That is not even remotely close to what the article states, and I surely didn't say that.

Nice try, though.

Not really.

 

[RobDownSouth]

That is not even remotely close to what the article states, and I surely didn't say that.

Nice try, though.

Not really.

Queerbait is up to his trademark #AscriptionAgain
Perhaps he forgot to take his meds this morning.

 

[pointless]

hooray for corruption. it's what makes america great.

 

[about_average]

Silly me for thinking the pentagon knows best what they need.

Though the pay raise could be a good thing, depending on who's getting the raises and how much.

 

[pointless]

i remember reading an article a few years ago from when were pulling out of afghanistan about the commanders on the ground complaining that they were building multi million dollar facilities that they would never use simply because there were contracst to build the fucking things, so they were fucking going to build them whether we needed them or not.

 

[Lancecastor]

Return of the Hawks.

What's Paul Wolfowitz doing these days?

He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, working on issues of international economic development, Africa and public-private partnerships, and chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council.

Sounds like he's ready to come off the bench!

 

[water505]

What war?

 

[screwulibz]

Hey ALGO, cum back so we can grab your PUSSY

 

[BotanyBoy]

Liberals complaining about the government robbing citizens....LMFAO

The laughable hypocrisy of that is totally lost upon the left I'm sure.

House and Senate negotiators who crafted the defense bill dropped a House plan to shift $18 billion from the emergency wartime spending account to pay for additional weapons and combat gear the Pentagon didn't request.

Funny.....(D)'s NEVER complain about pissing money into their rich friends pockets through bullshit government works.

We just spent 8 years hearing about how doing that is called 'progress'.

Now (R)'s own the place and (D)'s suddenly go full on libertarian?

 

[about_average]

Liberals complaining about the government robbing citizens....LMFAO

I suspect this was a parody thread, to a certain extent.

 

[water505]

Still waiting to hear from the thread starter which war is robbing money for Americans.

 

[Hard_Rom]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

US could half it's defence budget and still out build China and Russia combined. It could take a full % point of GDP, still out build China, Russia, the Saudis and the UAE and put 100 'billion' dollars into other more worthwhile endeavours.

You can run a smaller country with that.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Still waiting to hear from the thread starter which war is robbing money for Americans.

The War on Terrorism

The War on Drugs

 

[about_average]

Still waiting to hear from the thread starter which war is robbing money for Americans.

The war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, to name two more.
The war on Christmas not so much.

 

[BotanyBoy]

I suspect this was a parody thread, to a certain extent.

One would hope so but after some of the shit that I've seen post T-day sometimes I have a hard time telling the difference between the two.

Still waiting to hear from the thread starter which war is robbing money for Americans.

Everything in the middle east....is money grubbing bullshit.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Still waiting to hear from the thread starter which war is robbing money for Americans.

And don't give us any 'undeclared' bullshit! Nobody declares war anymore. Why give away the element of surprise and hamper a good pre-emptive strike.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Of all the things I am being robbed for...

 

[about_average]

I don't give us any 'undeclared' bullshit! Nobody declares war anymore. Why give away the element of surprise and hamper a good pre-emptive strike.

Neither of the wars in Iraq nor the one in Afghanistan were declared and they were certainly no surprise.
I saw the first Iraq war coming as soon as it was reported that they were moving troops to the border of Kuwait and Glaspie said it was a matter between Iraq and Kuwait.

 

[water505]

I'm beginning to think there are conservatives here pretending to be liberals.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Neither of the wars in Iraq nor the one in Afghanistan were declared and they were certainly no surprise.
I saw the first Iraq war coming as soon as it was reported that they were moving troops to the border of Kuwait and Glaspie said it was a matter between Iraq and Kuwait.

Are you saying that neither action was voted on by Congress?

 

[water505]

Robbing taxpayers to grow the industry of government to benefit itself is okeedokee.