The more I think about this idea, the less I like it. I could imagine forms in which I'd support something along these lines, but the budgetary costs involved are staggering and the strategic rationale is thin. The political rationale, by contrast, is clear but also kind of tawdry and misguided. I don't think you're ever going to convince voters that the Democrats are the authentic party of militaristic nationalism.
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More Big Army
25 Apr 2007 03:36 pm
Comments (51)
While I understand that the increase is disquieting to some let´s remember something; the army provides employment with benefits to recruits, often from the poorest backgrounds. In light of the increasing poverty within the U.S. this should not be taken lightly. While I would prefer other jobs programs such as the depression era CCC or WPA, at this moment armed forces jobs maybe all we can get. Also it does give the Democratic party a way to instill pride in the military at a time whan morale is waning and recriut quality is dropping rapidly.
Tawdry I can live with.
Its the misguided part I'm worried about. Its one think if Obama says he'll do it, and then reverses course once he's elected (sort of like what Bush did wrt a cap on carbon emmissions). But, if it doesn't even help him politically, then its definitely bad for him to reinforce misguided policies.
"I don't think you're ever going to convince voters that the Democrats are the authentic party of militaristic nationalism"
True, but didn't Kennedy win by exploiting a non-existent "missile gap"?
I agree it's bad policy but, if done right, could be very good politics.
"The more I think about this idea, the less I like it ... the budgetary costs involved are staggering and the strategic rationale is thin."
So, Barack isn't the come home america candidate you wanted him to be?
Maybe he's actually a bloodthirsty warmonger just like Richard Holbrooke.
Fourth!!!
Half the point in arguing for a larger Army nowadays is so that we can lessen our dependence on contractors. Regardless of cost (though they usually turn out to cost more), contractors are simply ineffective and a big contributing factor to the break down in the military.
Not to mention that the very last thing the country needs is TWO parties of militaristic nationalism. Or is it beyond hope that people will ever again start thinking about the country's needs instead of political gamesmanship?
Bubba is right. It's disgraceful that our army no longer feeds itself or provides MP services on bases, or contracts out convoy duty. The 92,000 more troops should be relegated to support roles that can also play a role in improving America's seriously degraded infrastructure (rail, power grid, etc) via the Army Corps of Engineers. Improving national rail service in a New Deal kind of fashion, as part of our Manhattan-Emission Reduction product, would do a lot to cut back emmissions, would prime the economic pump, and would give us the opportunity to train thousands of young engineers and scientists to keep us competitive with India and China.
The unfortunate part is, they'd be in the Army.
As a little sand to throw in the eyes of the voters, this seems unobjectionable.
I didn't think it was possible that Edwards, having outflanked Obama to the left on almost every issue, could do it with foreign policy. Now I think he could. Maybe.
"I didn't think it was possible that Edwards, having outflanked Obama to the left on almost every issue, could do it with foreign policy. Now I think he could. Maybe."
It shouldn't be all that hard. Obama's made pretty damn clear that his interest is running to the center, not the left.
matt, i think you miss the point; it's not just a political play. Obama is a centrist candidate but he is viable because he opposed the war. he wants a larger army because as a centrist he probably wants to repair the damage the bush admin wreaked and play a major and enlightened role in the world. Obama has the added advantage of lending a legitimacy to this liberal internationalist mission because of his story, his eloquence, his intelligence, and his good intentions. I think centrists simply cannot believe their luck at his emergence. Writing as one, we envisaged fighting the primary against the anti war folks but now we have someone who passes their basic litmus test. The anti-war lobby is so narrowly focused on that issue they will give him a pass on a lot else. Welcome to the revolution.
I see "tawdry," but I don't see misguided. I think people are overrating capacity as the limiting factor on foreign interventions.
"Obama is a centrist candidate ... Welcome to the revolution."
Of course, a "centrist revolution" is not what lots of us are looking for. Moving the country in a progressive direction would seem to be a higher priority for lots of us.
To move the country to the Left? Not to get all obama-y on you, but how about forwards? I think this a once in a generation opportunity to reshape this country and the world for the better. Ending global poverty is within reach. Curing Malaria even more so. Stopping global warming is a necessity, not an opportunity. Closing the widening gap between rich and poor isn't about moving to the left, it's a moral imperative and our very Democracy is at risk if we don't take action.
Or at least, that's how I would frame it if I were trying to get people to vote for Edwards. :)
Petey, I love how in your narrative the guy who voted for the war and went the way of the incompetence dodge and went with a more parochial view is the left-wing candidate and the guy who was against the war, had a more internationalist view and actually analyzed Iraq as it is is the centrist, right-leaning candidate.
"To move the country to the Left? Not to get all obama-y on you, but how about forwards?"
Fuck forwards. I'm not afraid of politics.
In my reading of history, the country has moved drastically right since 1980, and what is desperately needed at the moment is to move it to the left.
Happily, due to the war and due to GOP Congressional corruption, we have a once in a generation opportunity for a Democratic Reagan to make lefty political thought acceptable to the electoral center - in the same way that Reagan made rightist political thought acceptable to the electoral center in 1980.
Move the political center of the country to the left, and forward will take care of itself.
Fail to take advantage of this opportunity to move the political center of the country to the left, and all the talk of forward in the world won't get us out of the mud.
Well, Edwards isn't exactly giving us anything real on "moving us to the left" on foreign policy that is actually good. He offers the basic Democratic stuff plus more protectionism (yeah, that will work) and parochialism than both Obama and Clinton. Any Democrat we elect is going to be pushing for things like universal health care. By this point that is axiomatic.
Yeah, I don't think there are really that many members of the One True Left. Not enough to get an election on that basis alone, anyway.
I think you could convince enough voters that the Democratic Party was the party of setting the Army's priorities to reflect realities, while the Republican party was the party of Rumsfeld's Rules.
Yeah, I wasn't very clear. I don't disagree at all, and I don't really have a problem with using "Left" and "Forwards" interchangeably, given that, on all of the issues I cited above, I think the "left" position is vitally, vitally important. I just think what I said sounds a lot better to most people, even your average Liberal Democrat. Obviously, you feel free to keep talking about it your way, I'll do the same, and we'll both drink to President John Edwards in November 2008.
"I don't think there are really that many members of the One True Left. Not enough to get an election on that basis alone, anyway."
Sure.
And there weren't enough members of the One True Right to win an election that basis in 1980 either.
But the public was dissatisfied with the Democratic Party at that moment, and Reagan had enough personal appeal to bring the electoral center along with him to support an ideology that they didn't fully subscribe to.
Edwards won't win the general election because of his leftism. He'll win the general election and suddenly his leftism will be validated as being in the political mainstream. That's the revolution.
What exactly is this mechanism that will allow Edwards to move the US left? His protectionism will likely just end up hurting workers, which will offset at least part of the gains we would get from his programs. I have seen nothing of why he would be more likely to get universal healthcare and higher minimum wages passed than Obama or Clinton (wow, he came out with a plan first when the primary was months away!). His protectionism will also make it harder for those in poor countries to raise their own standard of living and make a real, functioning economy. Part of our terrorism problem derives from the fact that the Arab states we support rely on oil exports in lieu of building a good economy via good governance. He is closer to the AIPAC/Likudnik line on Middle East issues. So how exactly is this great transformation supposed to take place under Edwards, assuming he can even get the nomination?
"assuming he can even get the nomination?"
was supposed to read
"assuming he can even win the presidency?"
Petey can be a little annoying. He's also usually correct.
How to move the country to the left in three easy steps.
a. Run as a progressive (an economic populist)
b. Win (prerefably big)
c. Enact a good portion of the agenda on which you ran
"His protectionism will likely just end up hurting workers"
Edwards' position is that future trade accords should have achievable labor and environmental standards.
That's right in the mainstream of Democratic thought, though some candidates are leary of highlighting it due to a fear of losing campaign contributions from corporate interests.
If you find such an attitude "protectionist", then as Jeff Foxworthy never said, you might not be a lefty.
I agree with Matt on this one, it's not clear to me why the military needs to be expanded... of course I'm not an expert. I wonder which one of Obama's advisors came up with this idea, and what their rationale is for it (and the political rationale doesn't seems to be very good, either).
a. Run as a progressive (an economic populist)
b. Win (prerefably big)
c. Enact a good portion of the agenda on which you ran
But then what do we do with all these underpants?
"Petey can be a little annoying. He's also usually correct."
I'm the anti-Dale Carnegie. I could publish a book on how to lose friends and annoy people.
I prefer Edwards to the other candidates. But I voted for Bloomberg, and all that. Surely I can't be much of a lefty.
"But I voted for Bloomberg, and all that. Surely I can't be much of a lefty."
I supported Weiner in the primary for the precise reason of winning votes like yours in the general.
I think Weiner could've made the general election interesting.
"But then what do we do with all these underpants?"
Put them on our heads and dance around. What else does anybody do with extra underpants?
1) I think most readers here do not realize the situation we are in. For the first time in 225 years of our republic, we have a huge standing army which in not balanced by any equivalent enemy. That same situation destroyed the Roman Republic --upon which our Constitution was designed.
2) The Founders of this country studied history , its lessons, the nature of power, and how power is controlled --or not. Yet in spite of our $1 Trillion+/year education budget, few of our citizens even realize the issue exists.
3) Perhaps it might be worth while to look at the Anti_Federalist Papers -- No. 25 , specifically. AKA Number 10 in the series written under the Alias "Brutus". A short excerpt:
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"24 January 1788
To the People of the State of New-York.
The liberties of a people are in danger from a large standing army, not only because the rulers may employ them for the purposes of supporting themselves in any usurpations of power, which they may see proper to exercise, but there is great hazard, that an army will subvert the forms of the government, under whose authority, they are raised, and establish one, according to the pleasure of their leader.
We are informed, in the faithful pages of history, of such events frequently happening. — Two instances have been mentioned in a former paper. They are so remarkable, that they are worthy of the most careful attention of every lover of freedom. — They are taken from the history of the two most powerful nations that have ever existed in the world; and who are the most renowned, for the freedom they enjoyed, and the excellency of their constitutions: — I mean Rome and Britain.
In the first, the liberties of the commonwealth was destroyed, and the constitution overturned, by an army, lead by Julius Cesar, who was appointed to the command, by the constitutional authority of that commonwealth. He changed it from a free republic, whose fame had sounded, and is still celebrated by all the world, into that of the most absolute despotism. A standing army effected this change, and a standing army supported it through a succession of ages, which are marked in the annals of history, with the most horrid cruelties, bloodshed, and carnage; — The most devilish, beastly, and unnatural vices, that ever punished or disgraced human nature.
The same army, that in Britain, vindicated the liberties of that people from the encroachments and despotism of a tyrant king, assisted Cromwell, their General, in wresting from the people, that liberty they had so dearly earned.
You may be told, these instances will not apply to our case: — But those who would persuade you to believe this, either mean to deceive you, or have not themselves considered the subject.
I firmly believe, no country in the world had ever a more patriotic army, than the one which so ably served this country, in the late war.
But had the General who commanded them, been possessed of the spirit of a Julius Cesar or a Cromwell, the liberties of this country, had in all probability, terminated with the war; or had they been maintained, might have cost more blood and treasure, than was expended in the conflict with Great-Britain. When an anonimous writer addressed the officers of the army at the close of the war, advising them not to part with their arms, until justice was done them — the effect it had is well known. It affected them like an electric shock. He wrote like Cesar; and had the commander in chief, and a few more officers of rank, countenanced the measure, the desperate resolution had been taken, to refuse to disband. What the consequences of such a determination would have been, heaven only knows. — The army were in the full vigor of health and spirits, in the habit of discipline, and possessed of all our military stores and apparatus. They would have acquired great accessions of strength from the country. — Those who were disgusted at our republican forms of government (for such there then were, of high rank among us) would have lent them all their aid. — We should in all probability have seen a constitution and laws, dictated to us, at the head of an army, and at the point of a bayonet, and the liberties for which we had so severely struggled, snatched from us in a moment. It remains a secret, yet to be revealed, whether this measure was not suggested, or at least countenanced, by some, who have had great influence in producing the present system. — Fortunately indeed for this country, it had at the head of the army, a patriot as well as a general; and many of our principal officers, had not abandoned the characters of citizens, by assuming that of soldiers, and therefore, the scheme proved abortive"
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Note: The "secret" referred to in the above paper was the 1783 Newburgh Mutiny -- the plot within the officer corps of the Continental Army to overthrow Congress if Congress welched on its promise to give the officers half-pay for life. The plot was promoted by Alexander Hamilton -- who should have had his brains blown out 20 years before Aaron Burr did us the favor.
George Washington intervened at the last moment to scotch the plot via a personal appeal to his officers.
A unit of the Continental Army actually surrounded Independence Hall here in Philadelphia and threatened to imprison Congress. After some congressional aides got the soldiers drunk, the Congress fled under cover of darkness to the protection of the Princeton New Jersey militia.
A piece of history that the gun control lobby doesn't like to acknowledge. There are good reasons for the Second Amendment -- just as there's a good reason why the Congress reduced the US Army in the 1780s to about 5 men serving as caretakers of the West Point armory.
We are a nation of 300 million people holding 200 million+ firearms and separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. We could scrap the entire Department of Defense tomorrow and there are few countries who would screw with us.
If we kept 20% of STRATCOM as well, there is no one who would screw with us.
DOD exists to protect the overseas investments of the rich -- not to defend the USA. That's why 19 goatherds from a primitive country were able to pull off Sept 11. Why did no one ask why we needed a "Department of Homeland Security" if we had a "Department of Defense"? If a Department of DEFENSE isn't defending the Homeland, then what the hell is its purpose? Or are we into Orwell-speak?
I think a good progressive formula for US defense budgeting would be - 1% of the US population serving / 4% of GDP budget. This would involve a major cut of defense systems to increase the size of the troop strength by the 600-700K it would require to get to around 3 million people - the majority serving in some kind of Guard or Reserve unit.
I'd increase the force by 1 brigade in each of the 435 Congressional districts and make the forces a mix of Navy Seabees, and National Guard constructing units, etc. - for primary use in civil emergency functions and some infrastructure maintenance.
It's nice to talk about cutting Defense spending but even the Clinton administration cut people more than weapons systems. If you spread the people out in every Congressional district the political balance switches from the defense contractors to the communities that like the 1,500 jobs + benefits in their district more than they like V-22s.
I supported Gifford because his brother was teaching a class of mine at the time. That may not have been the best reason though.
I think Chait has the basics of Obama's speech and its broader meaning for Obama's foreign policy quite right.
I think the Iraq war is a perfect lens through which to look at Pentagon spending. Most Pentagon spending seems to have no relation to wars that the U.S. might really get into at all. For instance, the Future Battlefields initiative. So why are we spending that money? I would say it is because military Keynesianism has become entrenched in our system. We are trying to become better than enemies that we will never see on battlefields that will never exist, and such is the power of Pentagon paranoia and boosterism that going against this fictitious superiority is considered being weak on defense. Hmmm, in my opinion being weak-headed on defense is not seeing that, for a mere million to million and a half dollars, a determined paramilitary force was able to topple NYC's biggest buildings in 2001, and they could do it again if they could get together an organizer as good as Mohammed Atta.
No party will take down the military to the real scale we need - which is maybe 0.50 of the GNP, if that. 100 billion a year would be more than enough. Instead, just to stir things up, the U.S. will insist on planting bogus interceptor missile systems in Poland and shit. In other words, they will press hard until they finally get an enemy. It is ridiculous and shameful, especially as, in the next fifty years, the real work of security should be about massive public investment in warding off environmental disaster.
"For instance, the Future Battlefields initiative. So why are we spending that money? I would say it is because military Keynesianism has become entrenched in our system."
Not really.
If you accept that the US should continue to act as the military hyperpower, and if you're willing to account for half of the planet's military spending to accomplish that, then things like Future Battlefields makes for good policy. A domination of high-tech weaponry is crucial if you want to continue as the military hyperpower.
Of course, if you don't accept the US's role as outlined above, then stuff like Future Battlefields doesn't make sense. But I don't think military Keynesianism is the correct rationale under current strategic thinking.
At a guess I'd say that Obama wants to enlarge the army because (a) it's been clearly proven it isn't large enough for the jobs its been given, and (b) none of us knows what the future holds.
I marched against Iraq in 2003 but I'm not naive enough to think that we might not have another Afghanistan in the next decade. Or that Afghanistan might get so bad that we'll look back at Iraq with nostalgia. It's a horrible thought, but that's life.
Re the comment "if you don't accept the US's role as outlined above, then stuff like Future Battlefields doesn't make sense. But I don't think military Keynesianism is the correct rationale under current strategic thinking."
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Roger's explanation may not be the whole story but it does have elements of truth.
Some of the advanced weaponry actually ends up hurting us badly. The person who strongly supported the F-22 above is wrong, for example. The F-22, being a fighter jet, will be lost to the enemy -- as the F-117 stealth fighter was lost in Bosnia in 1999. (The F-117 debris was hauled off before it could be bombed and fell into God know whose hands).
Enemy nations can analyse it and discover the composition (both physical and chemical) of the stealth coating. They can then use that in multiple ways for an asymmetrical attack -- not so much by recreating a stealth fighter themselves but in other ways.
As far as "military Keynesianism" goes, Bush and the Republicans Congresses have stolen $4 TRILLION out of the Social Security/Medicare Trust Fund in the past 6 years and have pissed it away like a drunken sailor. What do you think happens in the next year or so when that stimulus stops? Bush's spending hasn't been an investment that will yield future returns -- it's mostly been wasteful consumption.
Paul Kennedy, in his book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", explained how excessive military spending is slow arterial bleeding that has brought down hyperpower after hyperpower.
Empires arise not because they are profitable but because small elites reap the huge profits while the huge costs are dumped off onto the common citizens. Pundit whores like Tom Friedman refuse to discuss the huge costs of globalization -- that it works only if the USA maintains order via a system that is putting us deeper and deeper into debt with the Chinese.
Actually, Bankruptcy, deep poverty, decline and conquest by a foreign power may be the best case scenario for US citizens in the path down which Bush/Cheney are leading us.
The worst case scenario is if Bush/Cheney and their heirs actually succeed in conquering the world. Read Edward Gibbon to see what it is like when the entire world is run by Caligula -- with no place to which one can flee for refuge. When the mirage of "world peace" dissolves into constant civil war as one man after another strives to be Supreme Ruler.
"Paul Kennedy, in his book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", explained how excessive military spending is slow arterial bleeding that has brought down hyperpower after hyperpower."
To make a vocabulary point, the US is really the first military hyperpower in history, which is why the word had to be coined after 1991.
One could make cases for Rome and the Mongols, but they were both regional dominant powers rather than the true global hyperpower that the US currently is.
The comments in this thread strike me as very disturbing. Somehow, it seems to be a given to everyone except Don that an overwhelmingly large military in the U.S. is a laudable goal and/or inevitability. I'm not "opposed to all military excursions at anytime, any place," to use the terms that Yglesias once used disparagingly to describe the protestors of his college years. From 2002 onward, I have wanted to see a U.S. force of about 100,000 in Afghanistan. Hasn't happened yet, and as a result bin Laden is as strong as ever. We will hear from him again. But as Don keeps trying to argue, this notion of a perpetual 3 million strong army is simply unsustainable, and ultimately a force for global instability.
That said, leading into 2008 it is somewhat unavoidable to increase military spending, if for no other reason than to repair the sorry mess that our army has become, and to kick out the skewed influence of the contractors once and for all. However, I disagree with other commenters that this means that additional troops must be added. Why not follow Feingold's lead and have a massive redeployment of the troop levels we already have to rebuild a functional military?
I am in agreement with Mr. Williams. What the hell does a country with legal semi-automatic weapons and the largest military budget in history need a "Dept of Homeland Security" for? Perhaps along with creating the War Czar in the name of efficiency, we could eliminate the IRS and have taxes instead sent directly to the Pentagon?
I don't think you're ever going to convince voters that the Democrats are the authentic party of militaristic nationalism.
The Democrats are the authentic party of 'same as the Republicans but not quite as crazy as the Republicans'. Militaristic nationalism is a part of it.
Well, anyone who's lived in western Washington for 50 years could quote you chapter and verse about how the Democrats can be the party of perpetual war, priming the pump with military spending. Does the name Scoop Jackson ring any bells?
The cost of this military insanity is almost unbelievable. For example, I was reading yesterday about the possibility of connecting 50 midWest cities with high-speed rail for a cost of under $5 billion. Let us very conservatively discount the number of cities connected to 25 and raise the cost estimate to $10 billion, and we still have a major transportation improvement for less than the cost of three months of war.
As for the need for all our militarism, it should be obviously impossible for anybody to transport enough troops to our shores to subject this nation. Three or four Trident subs at sea have the capability to deter anything that can be deterred.
Being of advanced years, and having had some of my rough edges worn off, I view with a certain equanimity the possible end of people on Earth. Were I younger, or if I had children, I would be like totally disturbed about our militaristic insanity. What we spend on war would solve our global warming problem in short order.
Well, "whatever".
"Paul Kennedy, in his book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", explained how excessive military spending is slow arterial bleeding that has brought down hyperpower after hyperpower."
And on the substance, it's worth noting that what Kennedy was talking about bringing down great powers is having to spend to keep up with other great powers.
The cost of being the hyperpower is actually quite cheap. Separate of the Iraqi Misadventure, we've been spending considerably less on defense post-'91 than we did during the cold war.
And given that the hyperpower dynamic, properly managed, tends to discourage other powers from entering into large military buildups that we'd have to match, I think it's reasonable to assert that current levels of US military spending are actually sound fiscal planning.
Of course, the whole dynamic only really works if we're perceived as a benevolent hegemon, which is one of the reasons why the Iraqi Misadventure is so damaging to US interests.
Petey has it right. The basic assumption behind pre-Dubya American hegemony is that we were--and perceived to be--benevolent. Dubya has removed that assumption.
Petey, of course it isn't quite cheap. It is only cheap by making the military budget refer not to our military needs but to some weird percentage of the GNP. That percentage shouldn't be taken from the Cold War - it should be taken from the pre-Cold war period. And by that standard, it is grossly swollen and absurd. This is, of course, just the dimension of direct outlay. There are other considerable costs as well. For instance, the idea that we are a hyperpower that, convinced of it, D.C. pundits rushed us into the cakewalk that was Iraq.
Unfortunately, the malign externals of exaggerated military spending are hardly ever discussed. Perhaps the worst of those externals, at the moment, is the Bush administration's use of the Pentagon to spread around more federal money in the D.C. area than any other president in history. Even WWII - a real war, unlike the fake war on terror - did not treat D.C. as well as the present one has. This accounts, in no small part, for the amazing retention of support for the Bush administration among the pundit and policy making elite. Just as a newspaper in Raleign, N.C., is going to be the last to worry about tobacco, the Washington Post, for instance, is going to be the last to find the war in Iraq to be not such a good idea. The structure that rushes the U.S. to war has been set up, and it isn't good. An entrenched political elite benefitting massively from programs that can only be justified by perpetual threat of war is classically the way republics end. The U.S. doesn't really seem immune to that pattern.
As for the usefulness of being a hyperpower at all: from the early sixties to the late eighties, China and the U.S.S.R were at such odds and so hostile that their armed forces sometimes clashed. In that period, the U.S. spent trillions to effect deterrence - China spent a pittance, maybe 100 to 200 billion dollars, and was able to enjoy the same deterrence effect. Partly this Russia wasn't willing to risk even the "mere" loss of a couple million people in launching an attack on China, partly it was because the American military buildup allowed China to be a free rider. The U.S. benefit from all of that has been, at best.
dubious.
Take down the structures of hyperpowerdom, create a military that is oriented towards the wars that we may really fight instead of symbolic displays of power that benefit an entrenched few, and use the development of environmental technology as our new Keynesian multiplier - that seems a much more sensible course for the country. It is the kind of thing that has to happen to be promoted by activists who exist outside of the parties, at first, and it has to gain enough traction to eventually force the Dems, most probably, to respond to it.
Re Petey's comment "The cost of being the hyperpower is actually quite cheap."
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Comments closed May 09, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
But why would the goal be all or nothing, as opposed to making people (who like "militaristic nationalism") think that the Democratic party is marginally less opposed to it than they currently believe it to be?
Posted by washerdreyer | April 25, 2007 3:51 PM