Secretary of Defense Gates is pulling a major stunt by selling a smaller growth in the defense budget as a spending cut. The U.S. media are all too willing to further such propaganda. Headlines the New York Times: Pentagon Seeks Biggest Military Cuts Since Before 9/11.
Please notice that there has not been any cut at all in the defense budget "since before 9/11". The "biggest cut since" rhetoric is thereby nonsense. But its is even worse. There is no cut at all.
The White House ordered the Pentagon to squeeze almost all growth from its spending over the next five years, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.
To lower the rate of growth is not a cut at all. Still, the article uses "cut" ten times. But instead of cutting Gates will increase defense spending:
The Pentagon’s proposed operating budget for 2012 is expected to be about $553 billion, which would still reflect real growth, even though it is $13 billion less than expected. The Pentagon budget will then begin a decline in its rate of growth for two years, and stay flat — growing only to match inflation — for the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years. (The Pentagon operating budget is separate from a fund that finances the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.)
Additionally to this growth in the defense budget, the separate budgets for veteran care, nuclear weapons and the ongoing wars will also increase.
The whole thing is thereby just the dumbest of propaganda stunt. But predictably the voters will fall for it. The Republican majority in the House will protest against these "cuts" and eliminate some of them. The rhetoric will thereby be used to further grow the budget. And the media by propagandizing Gates moves will again have failed in their basic duty.