If Cheney deserves credit as any sort of "architect" of defense cuts, his "plan" was certainly long in execution, and well into the Clinton Administration years. Cuts were still occurring, even as Clinton was sending troops to Bosnia--and that did not start until late 95-early 96.

Much earlier, post-Vietnam, the Pentagon had concluded that we would never fight another war without significant participation from the Reserve Components (most of which sat out Nam). That theory worked extremely well, in practice, during the Gulf War. Although no National Guard combat arms units made it to the Gulf, participation by Reserve Component combat support and combat service support units was significant. The same was/is also true of the mission in the Balkans, where Reserve Components units continue to deploy.

However, while Reserve units (and individual servicemembers) were being deployed to the Balkans, units were also being eliminated. I know of a military intelligence battalion that went to Bosnia, served their 9 month tour, and came home to learn they'd been deactivated. That would have been in about 97. And it makes a heck of a lot of sense: we needed them this time, but we won't need them next time??? Likewise, we were looking high and low for military intelligence warrant officers to serve in Bosnia, while at the same time, MI warrant positions were being eliminated. My own unit, and several like it, was deactivated in early 98. Of course we weren't doing anything significant . . . just counterintelligence/counterterrorism analysis. AQ attacked our embassies in Africa 6 months later. Total cuts in the Reserve Components--all of which occurred under Clinton, as best I can remember--reduced the National Guard from around 400,000 to 300,000, and the Army Reserve from 300,000 to 200,000.

The 9/11 Commission Report puts cuts in the Intelligence Community into perspective: "The Clandestine Service (the CIA's operations arm) felt the impact of the post-Cold War peace dividend, with cuts beginning in 1992 . . . The nadir for the Clandestine Service was in 1995, when only 25 trainees became new officers." Tenet, to his credit, was able to reduce this trend in 1998--but because it takes a minimum of 5 years to run a security clearance and then recruit and train an incoming operations officer, we were still playing catchup on 9/11.

As far as draft deferments go, until the lottery system was instituted, student deferments were virtually automatic, for the asking.

Last edited by L. Brown; 05/24/07 08:41 AM.