Word: cheneys
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Given the logistical and manpower problems the gulf war highlighted, the Pentagon might be expected to argue for a bigger military establishment in the future. The opposite is true. In testimony before two congressional committees last week, Pentagon bosses Dick Cheney and Colin Powell defended their new multiyear budget, proposed earlier this month, which calls for a 25% cut in military personnel by 1995, a 4% reduction in spending and even the elimination of many of the weapons that have proved to be so dramatically effective in the gulf...
...Cheney and Powell make three arguments in favor of the cutbacks: 1) the runaway federal deficit dictates smaller defense budgets, 2) the Soviet threat has declined, and 3) quality can replace quantity...
...Oddly, Cheney also wants to phase out some of the battle equipment that the public has only begun to recognize. The M1A1 tank as well as the Bradley fighting vehicle, both hardy workhorses in the gulf, will no longer be produced. Assembly lines for the AH-64 Apache and AH-1S Cobra helicopters, so efficient in the fighting, will close; the Army wants a new heavy battle tank and a high-tech helicopter instead. The Navy will eliminate or scale back some weapons designed for battling the Soviets, including its Trident SLBM submarine program and its hunter-killer Seawolf submarine...
...Cheney wants to revive the case for other weapons whose demise seemed likely before the gulf war started. They include two costly gadgets that have played no role in Operation Desert Storm...
There is bravado everywhere. At the air bases, troops scrawl messages on the bombs: ALL ABOARD; GET OUT SADDAM; SAY CHEESE; HAVE A NICE DAY, with a smiley face, are written on a Maverick AGM-65 air-to-ground missile. When General Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney visited a Stealth fighter squadron, they inscribed a 2,000-lb., laser-guided bomb. TO SADDAM, WITH AFFECTION, wrote Cheney. YOU DIDN'T MOVE IT, SO NOW YOU LOSE IT, Powell wrote...