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Cheney Attacks Gore on Military Weakness

August 28, 2000

Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush and his vice presidential running mate Dick Cheney have campaigned against the defense cuts imposed on the Pentagon by the Clinton-Gore administration. However, Cheney has come under fire for his own defense cutbacks while he was Defense Secretary for Gov. Bush's father. In television appearances yesterday, Cheney acknowledged his role in reducing Pentagon spending following the cold war. But he said the Clinton administration has made far deeper cuts that have left the military in decline.

"With respect to this question of when the cuts started, we obviously began reductions as the cold war ended in 1990 and '91, in the aftermath of Desert Storm," Cheney said yesterday. "But we started with a reduction of 25 percent in force structure. They've gone far beyond that. The number of divisions in the U.S. Army has gone from 18 to 10. The number of wings in the Air Force has gone from 24 to 13. The number of ships in the Navy has gone from almost 600, now headed to less than 300. So they've cut far deeper than anything anticipated during my watch in the Pentagon."

During the Republican National Convention earlier this month, Bush said that the military is "low on pay, parts and morale." Yesterday, Cheney agreed with Bush's evaluation, saying that the armed forces suffered from poor morale, readiness, recruiting, and retention. "I think if you match our forces today up against any others around the world, we've got the best force," he said. "The problem is, it's in decline, and this administration has done very little to reverse that decline." Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, has disputed the Bush assessment that the Clinton-Gore administration has damaged military readiness. Cheney responded to Gore's denials by saying, "The only conclusion I can draw from Al Gore's comments about all this is that either he doesn't know what's going on in the U.S. military or he chooses not to tell the truth about it."

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