I read last week Mr. Gates is going to hit you up for another $86 billion to continue the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan thru the end of 2009.
Now I’m sure you are concentrating on fixing the economy. I even read this morning you are thinking about ‘fixing’ Social Security and Medicare. That should be interesting to watch.
As a good American citizen, let me toss a few low hanging fruit at you to pay for some this.
Don’t give Gates the $86 billion to continue the occupations. You can use that to bail out GM and Chrysler.
Cut the military budget by $500 billion or so. We’re spending a trillion dollars a year on the US military. Just to refresh your memory, when dubya took over in 2000 the military budget was $302 billion. So if you cut the budget to $500 billion, it’s still up by 66% from when dubya took over. The occupations are costing us at least $5,000 a second, so if you get out of both occupations you’ll have an extra $5,000 a second to help Americans.
I strongly recommend you read ‘War Is A Racket’ by Marine Corps Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. Save yourself $10 and read it online --> http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket... . It's a small book you can finish over short plane ride and I'd be interested what you think of that book.
Lastly, I understand you are big on bipartisanship. The Republicans (and some Democrats) are going to scream murder if you try to halt the occupations or cut the military budget and will attack you. The occupations will not be ended on bipartisanship. They will be ended by running out of money or bodies to throw into the fray. Why not get ahead of the curve?
Are you going to continue the insane path dubya took?
Say it ain’t so, Mr. O.