Is very much intact. Spare R.M. at DiA on the doomsday hysteria:
[T]he defence budget was slated to increase some 23% between 2012 and 2021. Now, according to Veronique de Rugy, the Pentagon will have to make do with a 16% boost. … Or to put it another way, as Lawrence Korb does, the "sequestration will return defense spending in real terms to its FY 2007 level, the next to last year of the Bush administration, when no one was complaining about devastating levels of spending." At a time when money is tight, that would seem reasonable, no? According to Winslow Wheeler, of the Center for Defense Information, the FY2007 level of funding would be higher, in real terms, than average annual military spending during the cold war.
What we desperately need is what Gingrich would call a total, profound re-evaluation of our real defense – as opposed to offense – needs. The Pentagon should be spending far less than it did during the Cold War. And given the enormous political resistance to the profound entitlement reform we need, the Pentagon may have to bear the brunt of retrenchment.
The Dish 