[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 46 (Thursday, April 23, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2303-H2304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               STATE OF MILITARY PREPAREDNESS IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, we are getting closer and closer to the 
anniversary of the invasion of South Korea, and I reflected back the 
other day when I was at my aunt and uncle's house in Fort Worth, Texas, 
because on one of their dressers they have a photograph of a young 
marine; his name was Son Stilwell, a Marine Lieutenant killed in Korea, 
one of the 50,000-some casualties KIA that we suffered in that 
conflict.
  I reflected on that this pending anniversary. We are on the eve of 
when I listened to our Secretary of Defense and President Clinton's 
defense leaders as they presented a declining defense budget to the 
U.S. Congress.

[[Page H2304]]

  The situation, I think, is a lot like it was in those days in 1950 
before that June invasion. To set the stage, Mr. Speaker, we have come 
down, we have slashed defense and cut down on our forces dramatically 
since Desert Storm. We have cut from 18 Army divisions that we had in 
1991 to only 10 today. That is, incidentally and coincidentally, the 
same number of Army divisions we had when Korea was invaded.
  We have gone from 24 to only 13 fighter air wings, so we have cut our 
air power almost in half under the Clinton Administration. And we have 
cut our naval vessels from 546 to 333, about a 40 percent cut in naval 
vessels.
  Now, the theme in 1950 and the reason that so many defense leaders 
from then Lewis Johnson, then Secretary of Defense, right on down, the 
theme that they propounded as they presented this declining defense 
budget to the U.S. Congress, and said that it was adequate, was that 
somehow we were the dominating Nation of the world with respect to 
high-tech, and nobody would mess with us. Of course, we had at that 
time the nuclear weapon. Nobody else presumably had that until a few 
years later.
  Yet we were shocked in June when the North Koreans invaded South 
Korea and almost pushed the South Korean forces and the Americans that 
tried to stem the tide into the sea. We tried to hold them up at the 
Osan Pass, the 25th Infantry Division that we flew in, MacArthur flew 
in from Japan, was cut to ribbons. The commander, General Dean was, in 
fact, captured by North Korean forces.
  We held the Pusan Peninsula by our toenails and finally started to 
push it up to the northern part of the peninsula. Then, interestingly, 
the theme that the leaders had that nobody would mess with us because 
we had the high technology and the nuclear weapon was further 
devastated when the Communist Chinese invaded South Korea.
  The point isn't that we are any dumber than we were in 1950 and/or 
maybe we were dumber than we are now, and maybe we have leaders today 
that know something those people didn't know. My point is that the 
events of the world are unpredictable and that we today are taking a 
high level of risk by dramatically cutting our defenses.
  The American people need to know that. They need to know that the 
massive savings, so-called savings that President Clinton is showing 
the world proudly and showing the American people proudly, the millions 
of dollars that he has pulled out of programs, have primarily been 
pulled out of national security.
  We have dramatically cut back our national security. And we do not 
know what this world is going to bring us. I am reminded of the fact 
that when we had our assembled intelligence apparatus and our 
intelligence leaders in front of us, and we asked them a few simple 
questions, such as which of you predicted the Falklands war, none of 
them could raise their hands. When we asked which of you predicted the 
downfall of the Soviet Union, that was in all the papers. None of them 
could raise their hands.
  And when we asked them which of you predicted the invasion of Kuwait, 
one of them actually said before or after the armored columns started 
moving? We said, no; before the armored columns started moving. None of 
them had predicted the invasion of Kuwait. It is not that they are not 
smart, it is not that they don't have a lot of resources at their 
disposal. The facts are that unexpected things happen in this world.
  We are still living in a very unstable world, and we have a declining 
military to face that unstable world with. One reason we were able to 
bring home to the American people so many of the soldiers and sailors 
and marines who went over to Desert Storm, and the reason we didn't 
have to fill up those 40,000 body bags we took with us in fighting the 
fourth largest army in the world, was because we were so strong we won 
the war decisively in a very short period of time with very limited 
American casualties.
  Mr. Speaker, we are taking a big chance today, because under the 
Clinton Administration's leadership, we have cut our military almost in 
half. If the balloon goes up today, we cannot win a Desert Storm war as 
decisively as we did just a few years ago.

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