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Scary stuff from Obama

Most of the stuff he says in this video is quite admirable, but there are a couple things that worry me.

"I will not weaponize space." Why not?
"I will cut spending for future weapons systems." Why?
 
Because clearly he wants to protect Uranus from ballistic warheads.
 
It depends on what he wants to cut. Their is vast amounts of waste in our military budget. Many projects could be cut without losing any military effectiveness, and some would probably increase effectiveness. However, I have yet to see any politician truly address that issue. I will withhold judgment until specifics about which programs he wants to cut are provided.
 
Navy Pride said:
Just more proof that this guy is not ready for prime time.........He wants to make us a 3rd world nation.........We must never let that happen...

* Obama plans to disarm America*by*Macsmind
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Explain to me Navy, (or more likely you'll just run away like usual) how taking weapons off of hair trigger, and leading a complete disarmant of all nations of nuclear weapons is going to make us a third world country.

Furthermore, explain to me how if there are no nuclear weapons left on the planet, how our military is not completely dominant? One of the reasons why China and Russia are against complete reduction is BECAUSE they know they have nothing that can stop the American Sledgehammer once those are gone.

You do realize that Henry Kissinger not to mention Colin Powell are saying the same stuff about nuclear weapons as Obama is?

Are you just knee jerking without actually understanding the subject?
 
Kandahar said:
Most of the stuff he says in this video is quite admirable, but there are a couple things that worry me.

"I will not weaponize space." Why not?
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Why should we?


"I will cut spending for future weapons systems." Why?
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Because we can't afford them. We can either do something about healthcare, or pay some defense contractor for 2000 dollar toilet seats, I think I would rather go with doing something about healthcare in America. ;)
 
Kandahar said:
"I will not weaponize space." Why not?
"I will cut spending for future weapons systems." Why?
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Can we afford another arms race? Furthermore would it actually benefit us?
And plenty of future weapons systems aren't needed. The XM2001 Crusader was axed for its obscene cost and failure to do the necessary job. Furthermore, it becomes a question of can something else do the job that already exists and for cheaper? The Comanche was axed for that reason.
 
March 26th, 2007

Candidate Name: John McCain

Date of Event: 03/23/07

Location of Event: Opera House, Franklin NH

Question: Senator McCain, Thank you for speaking about pork barrel spending and government waste. As you know, we spend $30 billion every year to maintain and modernize 10,000 nuclear weapons, and President Bush wants another $150 billion to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. Would you reduce our nuclear stockpile and save American tax dollars?

Response: Yes I would.

or....

The United States shares "an obligation with the world's other great powers to halt and reverse the proliferation of nuclear weapons," McCain said in a March 2008 speech. He also said the United States should work to "reduce nuclear arsenals all around the world, starting with our own." The United States does "not need all the weapons currently in our arsenal," he said.


????Macsmind-Blog of the MacRanger Radio Show....BWAAAAHAAAA!!!!...:joke:...:2rofll:


Scary stuff indeed.

Navy Pride said:
...It is hard to debate when one side does not know all the facts...
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SouthernDemocrat said:
Why should we?
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Someone's going to weaponize it. Might as well be us.

SouthernDemocrat said:
Because we can't afford them. We can either do something about healthcare, or pay some defense contractor for 2000 dollar toilet seats, I think I would rather go with doing something about healthcare in America. ;)
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Paying for $2000 toilet seats probably wasn't what Obama had in mind when he referred to "future weapons systems."

Having health care and having a strong military are not mutually exclusive. We could pay for universal health care if we A) end the idiocy in Iraq, B) allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, and C) raise taxes an additional 2-3% on the top bracket.

That price doesn't sound so unreasonable to me.
 
obvious Child said:
Can we afford another arms race?
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Absolutely. In fact, this is the perfect opportunity to do so. We have a brief window of a couple decades where we're still the only superpower in the world. That is almost certainly not sustainable in the long run.

May as well get a headstart on the space race NOW, before there's any competition. It'll save money in the long run.

obvious Child said:
Furthermore would it actually benefit us?
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Not in the near future. But I don't see how it could NOT benefit us a few decades down the road.

obvious Child said:
And plenty of future weapons systems aren't needed. The XM2001 Crusader was axed for its obscene cost and failure to do the necessary job. Furthermore, it becomes a question of can something else do the job that already exists and for cheaper? The Comanche was axed for that reason.
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Absolutely. But for every successful weapons system, there are probably 100 duds. That's just the nature of R&D. The fact that there are some duds is no reason to cut funding. It's not reasonable to expect that every promising lead is going to turn into a successful high-tech weapon.

Once it becomes clear that they aren't needed, by all means give them the axe. But Obama's words gave me the impression he wants to cut funding for future weapons systems IN GENERAL, not specific programs. But perhaps I'm wrong.
 
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Kandahar said:
Absolutely. In fact, this is the perfect opportunity to do so. We have a brief window of a couple decades where we're still the only superpower in the world. That is almost certainly not sustainable in the long run.
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Even though our debt is almost $10 trillion and we are facing record deficits?

How do you intend to pay for this?

Not in the near future. But I don't see how it could NOT benefit us a few decades down the road.
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I don't see how arms races benefits us aside from producing some cool commercial stuff largely in logistics.

But Obama's words gave me the impression he wants to cut funding for future weapons systems IN GENERAL, not specific programs. But perhaps I'm wrong.
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Perhaps so, but all of the candidates have been vague on most issues anyways.
 
I agree with Kandahar... his "cut funding for future weapons systems" just comes off as a little too general. Reducing wasteful defense spending and cutting inefficiencies is something I'm all for - but we should still be pursuing better military technology.
 
obvious Child said:
Even though our debt is almost $10 trillion and we are facing record deficits?

How do you intend to pay for this?
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It depends how much we plan to budget for future weapons systems. The DoD budget (excluding our various wars) for 2008 is $481 billion. Now I don't know how much of that is spent on what exactly, so I'm going to just guess here. Let's say that $80 billion of that is spent on future weapons systems. That could be paid for by eliminating the tax deduction for mortgage interest, or by raising taxes on gasoline by about 60 cents per gallon.

obvious Child said:
I don't see how arms races benefits us aside from producing some cool commercial stuff largely in logistics.
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The biggest benefit, as I see it, is the ability to disrupt entire communication networks for enemy nations/organizations, without messing them up for everyone else.
 
galenrox said:
Parts of it he's right about. It's ridiculous that we still have ICBM's on hair trigger with Russia.

The nuclear cat's out of the bag though, and non-proliferation is at best a short term solution because the technology can't just disappear, and eventually it'll spread all over. The reality is that the only sustainable solution is developing a means to counter nuclear weapons, and getting that cat out of the bag. 5 hundred years a dude with an blackhawk helicopter could've conquered the whole British empire no problem, but technology checks technology.

It also concerns me that he's seemingly defining himself in opposition to the advancement of military technology. In WW2 we'd have to firebomb cities to take out a target that 1 smart missile can do now, minimizing collateral damage is one of the biggest aims of developing military technology, along with it being a side effect of most forms of advancement of said technologies, even if it wasn't the motivating aim. One of the firmest laws of nature is that stagnation = death.
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I am not sure Russia is the "paper tiger" we seemed to have made them out to be since the end of the Cold War....Lately under Putin they have been rattling swords quite a bit..............Maybe having a few ICBMS pointed in their direction is not such a bad thing............

Like the great communicator once said.."Peace through strength."
 
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Kandahar said:
It depends how much we plan to budget for future weapons systems. The DoD budget (excluding our various wars) for 2008 is $481 billion. Now I don't know how much of that is spent on what exactly, so I'm going to just guess here. Let's say that $80 billion of that is spent on future weapons systems. That could be paid for by eliminating the tax deduction for mortgage interest, or by raising taxes on gasoline by about 60 cents per gallon.
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Dude, do you know how much the space program cost us? Furthermore, how many space based programs don't have significant overruns? A space weapons race will be ungodly expensive.

The biggest benefit, as I see it, is the ability to disrupt entire communication networks for enemy nations/organizations, without messing them up for everyone else.
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And if that makes the world more dangerous, how does that benefit us?

How about we stop spending unnecessary amounts of money to potentially kill each other and work on something a bit more productive?

Now, I don't mind the nice explosion or terrorist being turned into red mist, but our spending on military is just bloated.
 
Navy Pride said:
I am not sure Russia is the "paper tiger" we seemed to have made them out to be since the end of the Cold War....Lately under Putin they have been rattling swords quite a bit..............Maybe having a few ICBMS pointed in their direction is not such a bad thing.
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So you're okay with the five year cycle of either side almost annihilating all life on the planet?

All life was almost extinguished except for the disobedient actions of ONE commander.

No, it's not okay to have ICBMs pointing at each other on hair trigger.
 
obvious Child said:
So you're okay with the five year cycle of either side almost annihilating all life on the planet?

All life was almost extinguished except for the disobedient actions of ONE commander.

No, it's not okay to have ICBMs pointing at each other on hair trigger.
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No, I prefer them in stealth bombers on a hair trigger.
 
obvious Child said:
So you're okay with the five year cycle of either side almost annihilating all life on the planet?

All life was almost extinguished except for the disobedient actions of ONE commander.

No, it's not okay to have ICBMs pointing at each other on hair trigger.
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Don't know how old you are but we had ICBMs pointed at each other From 1950 thru 1986........Its called détente with another power that is sensible.......The Soviet Union knew they cold not attack us or we would make their country a parking lot and they would do the same to us............

I am more worried about a rogue state like Iran who has no value for life and thinks if you die you go to heaven and meet 80 virgins..........

You need to go back and read history if you were not around.........
 
Navy Pride said:
Don't know how old you are but we had ICBMs pointed at each other From 1950 thru 1986.
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On various forms of delivery systems. And throughout that time period and actually later as we only reoriented the missiles within the past decade and a half there have been numerous occasions were both sides almost annihilated each other over a glitch, human error or misunderstanding.

How you think that playing Russian Roulette with nukes is a good, I'll never know. Just because the numerous (read over a dozen) incidents didn't turn into a full blown nuclear exchange doesn't mean that leaving them there is a good idea. One of the most recent ones was then Yeltsin ignored his advisers and did not launch despite their massive concerns that the capitalist pig-dogs were attacking.

Its called détente with another power that is sensible.......The Soviet Union knew they cold not attack us or we would make their country a parking lot and they would do the same to us..
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And you fail once again to actually understand the subject. The issue isn't where or not MAD works. It is the issue of accidental launchings based on glitches, human error, or misunderstandings. No one is discussing the fact of MAD. The issue here is Russia's decaying C&C as well as our own mistakes. The US almost launched against Russia because some idiot forgot to take out the training exercise from the computer. We thought there was an actual launch against American soil. The number of these accidents is a good reason to believe in God. Statistically speaking, given the sheer number of accidents, screw ups, human error and computer glitches, we should all be dead.

I am more worried about a rogue state like Iran who has no value for life and thinks if you die you go to heaven and meet 80 virgins.
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First of all, you failed to understand the actual translation.
Second, you fail to provide a reason why Iran won't abide to MAD. If they know we have a handful of weapons or the capacity to nuke them back in 90 days, why would they try it?

You need to go back and read history if you were not around.........
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Given that you have failed to show you understand the subject, you need to reread history.
 
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