DND told to keep war costs down in coming budget year
sasquatch2 @ Sun Dec 02, 2007 9:33 pm
$1:
It's part of an increasingly determined effort by the Harper government to assert more civilian control over the military, which has been perceived as having too much leeway in both the conduct of the war and with the public purse, said the official.
Is this official anything other than a LIBRANO implant still in place? That remark sounded very politically motivated. I get a bit suspicious when an "official" makes noises like Derby.
Canadian_Mind @ Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:12 pm
I'd suspect civilian control would be a left-wing, thereby Liberal thing to do. Doesn't seem in character for the Conservatives, a right-wing party, to do.
What happened tot he days when political parties stuck to their beliefs, rather than morphing to suit the public? seems liek the only parties whostand behind their beliefs are the extremist parties, the NDP, the Bloc, and the green party.
DerbyX @ Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:42 am
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Believe it or not we are. Harper has increased spending by almost a billion every year.
I don't believe we are or else something is wrong. If we actually have the same relative level of spending then my father was right. They really could do alot more with alot less. We have far less soldiers, equipment, bases, ships, planes, etc for the same level of spending?
Sounds like our generation doesn't know how to economize.
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Perhaps we aren't getting same old used pieces of shit we always have, and are opting for stuff that may actually work?
We are going back to the peak of the cold war. We had aircraft carriers then. I don't think its that. Its that we aren't spending the same amount in %GDP. Thats why that standard is used. Thats why we appear to be supporting far less for the same amount.
You can't say were are buying top o the line stealth fighters. Aside from the LAV-IIIs and transport aircraft what purchases have we made that outstrip previous equipment? Not enough to account for why our dollars are buying far less then it apparently used to.
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I'm plenty pissed off. I would have rather kept the 2 percent on the gst, and used 100% of that money towards the military. But I'm also trying to show the other side. Devil's advocate if you will
Exactly why I posted what I did about 2 months ago. Remember our debate? I questioned the wisdom of promising tax cuts alongside debt reduction, increased spending both military and domestic, as well as big ticket purchases.
That numbers didn't add up I said and something was going to suffer. Either Harper was going to put us back into deficit spending or else he was going to break a promise and guess what? He chose to pick the one with the least amount of vote loss and that was the military.
No offence but you seemed to be very optomistic that he could pull off all of the above. That was a tad presumptous. Like you I'd rather a smaller tax cut coupled with a little less debt reduction in favour of equipment replacements and upgardes. Harper chose the political choice to garner votes and in doing so the military came out last which is entirely the reason the previous Liberal and PC gov'ts did before him.
The difference between them and Martin/Harper is the large surplus which softens the blow.