Tell me Keith, in all caps, which president just finished shutting down all military bases...holy crap it was your beloved warmongering draft dodger Bush! BTW Giuliani also dodged the draft in 1968 with a letter from a judge stating that he was a law clerk.
Newsflash...1968 it was not on the list of acceptable reason not to draw a draft number. Yet another dodger claiming to know what is best militarily.

First of all, mutual deterrance was the only reason the US never came to real blows with Russia in the cold war because everyone's finger was on the button, knowing that a push of the button would bring on nuclear war, and the end of the world. So spread that war mongering, expand the military garbage with your immigration cronies.. oh yea, 9/11.

SEcond.
"Giuliani said U.S. and European demilitarization after the two World Wars was a mistake that contributed to the growth of Nazism and communism"

This statement is laughable; he really needs a history lesson. How can we progress as a nation with uneducated morons repeating our mistakes from the past. also, i would like to hear how he could explain that demilitarization of the army AFTER THE DEFEAT OF NAZISM contributed to the GROWTH of NAZISM?! We just defeated the darn thing and all of a sudden we are contributing to it!? No RUDY, your militaristic, absolutism is what is making us weak. Communism grew because we allowed it to fester. I'm fairily certain we haven't seen nazis on a wide scale since we defeated the nazis though. increasing the military without even thinking of democracy is only wracheting up the pressure and tension.

Maybe you don't like Russia's government (though really, how is it that we're so concerned with Russian INTERNAL politics, when ours are so messed up, e.g. highly suspicious presidential elections; lobbyist influence through campaign contributions – really, do you suggest that American corruption is somehow 'better' than Russian corruption?). But Russia's attitude to EXTERNAL affairs seems quite sensible to me. Imagine if Russia infiltrated politics in Mexico and Canada and turned those countries against the U.S. You can bet the U.S. might take it a bit personally and make a very strong response.

The U.S. needs to get its own house in order before it can serve as any kind of model for the rest of the world. We need to return to our core American values, winning over people with our ideas and our character, not with brute force and threat. We are in a quagmire in Iraq, not because our military is too small, but because our civilian leadership is too ignorant. We need new ideas, someone like Obama or Edwards, or if you're a Republican someone like Huckabee or maybe we can get Bloomberg to run our country like a business, without the scary 'end of times' religious attitude, or maybe Gore will come save us all. At the very least we need a president who sincerely wants to create as much peace as possible in this world, not someone who is hell-bent on starting the next world war.

Need I say more?

HEy! jewliani your the biggest nut case of all the candidates with Mccain bozo as your running mate America will be executed from within.

While kucinich and Ron Paul the only truely founding fathers material in the race get laughed at by Americans
Little do the Americans know that they are going to be told who is the next president the e machines will let Americans know who will be president and it wont be anything that is founding father material I assure you it will be evil and ready for another round of dismemberment of America.
Piece by piece they will rip America assunder and all because Americans are too dumb and too lard arse to riot like their forefathers
America the cesspool of freedom
E machines and judeges saying which one is president like in 2000 how is that democracy
it would be laughable if it were not so tragic

Giuliani uses this military build-up excuse to divert his personal extra-maritial expense issue hitting the news.

Giuliani builds his campaign on his new york mayor record. On 9/10, he was an unde-rachiever as a mayor, and be became a hero on 9/11. To many new yorkers, giuliani is no hero.

To people unknown to him, Giuliani may look good from a distance. But to people knowing him well, Giuliani disappoints them as husband, father, mayor or leader.

I love it when Republicans spout their brainwashed statistics. Frankly, although Clinton did reduce some D.O.D. spending–quality of life issues spending went up. The "Advanced Tactical Fighter" was finally funded...and truly most of the reductions in "military facilities (not personnel) was due to Graham/Rudman base closures–which we all know was created, sponsored, and passed by a Repuclican congress. In reality troop strenght remained static in all branches of the services–and the reductions were gained from improved efficiency in D.O.D. budgeting–thanks to Al Gore. Get the facts right.

Also, about Russia enjoying watching and everything. So far, between the US and Russia, only one country's economy hasn't collapsed. That's right. Tuck your tail and go on back to the Kremlin like you did in 1990.

In the end, and not really trying to sound macho, but just letting you know, let Putin have his "justification" and let him hit us. He'll learn the same lesson we taught the Germans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, and what the insurgents are learning.

That lesson is, when you fight me and my Marines, a lot of you die.

-"Iraq is loss. We should concentrate elsewhere, rebuild our forces, and prepare for the coming campagins"
– Osama bin Laden, 2005

2) The Democratic Congress has ALREADY voted to expand the authorized size of the army and Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is authorized its highest strength since WWII. The army is expanding by over 60,000 by 2011.

3) In the case that Russia does become belligerant, there will be no time to draft, train, equip, and assign forces. In both world wars it took us over a year to raise a military large enough to fight. But, back then we weren't Target #1, and we had two oceans surrounding us. Today, those oceans are A LOT smaller.

4) Whether Republican or Democrat, there's already going to be a lot of military spending to rebuild the forces from Iraq, and get enough recruits for the rotation.

5) We have the SMALLEST (except for Britain) conventional, developed military force in the world. We have BARELY 1 million army and Marines. Divide by 7 and that's how many combat soldiers and Marines we have. It would take AT LEAST 5 million just to secure California.

6) Russia declared itself an adversary in 2004 and again in 2006. We must take them seriously. China has been closing ports of call to US warships (these are regular port calls too).

7) He said nothing about "fighting" them. It's the same strategy Lincoln empolyed with the rebels. He is after all considered a "great" president. He raised 75,000 soldiers before he even took office as a reason for the South to negotiate instead of fight.

There is already more than a growing concern that Putin's party will use a landslide victory to change the constitution (if they receive 66% or more of the vote they will be able to do this) so that Putin could again run for president. Will they? Don't know. Would he? Don't know. But it's enough to warrant a close eye.

9) Most people are simpletons and view Iraq as purely a war for oil. That is how people are. Very few ever see what was actually happening until after it happened. It is stupid to think that in the middle of a war you think you know the causes, what's going on, and what's going to happen.

10) It doesn't matter who you vote for, this will happen. Your Democratic congress has already authorized it, Hillary has stopped her "everyone out by 2009" speeches, massive signing bonuses have been attatched to combat arms (infantry, cavalry, artilerry, armored). It doesn't take a genius to realize the the Pentagon (whom Bush and Rumsfeld ignored when they went to Iraq) see something and are trying to prepare (and this time they are listening, but the American people are not.)

11) It is always better to have the military and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

12) We always like to look to the Greek philosophers and talk about how smart they were. Let's look at what they told us.

"Provide in peace what is needed in war."

"Arms keep peace."

"Nobody enters into war uninformed, and those that think something can be gained from it will not be deterred by either caution or fear"

"Never trust an alliance with the powerful."

"The strong did what they could, and the weak suffered what they must."

"The few cannot contend with the many; the weak cannot contend with the strong."

13) A war has never started because a country was too strong. And strong or not, if any country thinks they will gain something by fighting us, there is no way to stop it.

14) If it does happen, we will probably only have time to react. Not time to build an army, train the army, equip the army, pay the army, and then react.

15) And finally, winning wars (and preventing them) is entirely about initiative. Gain the initiative, win the battle/war. Lose the initiative, lose the battle/war.

I don't see many people calling for us to ignore Russia and China, and very few (if any) are advocating that we don't need any sort of military. Your straw man is just a little obvious, don't you think?

You bring up an interesting point, though. We're buying more and more stuff from China, sending them more and more of our money – which they then use to buy up the debt instruments needed to fund the GOP's reckless "borrow and spend" fiscal policy. How would going even deeper in debt to build up our military do anything at all to alleviate this problem? Regardless of the size of our "big stick", China won't attack us when they can just keep lending us the money that we spend on their stuff, eventually allowing them to buy us lock, stock and barrel. What are we going to do – threaten to bomb them if they stop selling Wal*Mart their cheap tat, or (even more ridiculously) if they decide not to buy our T-bills?

We have the world's strongest military force already, more than large enough to protect the physical security of our actual territory. It has become apparent, however, that it isn't sufficient to fulfill that mission, provide occupying forces in half the countries of the globe AND try to put down an insurgency in a medium-sized country all at the same time. That isn't a good argument for increasing the size of our military, though; rather, it is proof that we have a Cold War "persistence of vision" problem in which every challenge to any aspect of our alleged "superiority" is seen as an existential threat.

I sincerely hope that Rudy supporters read this and realize what he is. He is a war hawk and is entirely unfit to assume the single most powerful position in the world.

Standard maxim throughout all of history. It's too bad that too many in this topic are little more that a bunch of Neville Chamberlains waiving their precious paper treaties in the air.

Paper burns, people.

There is an arrested adolescence to this man – a lust for confrontation – that is so utterly dangerous at this national and global moment.

God help us all if this man is elected.

Please, do!. Meanwhile Russia will sit and watch growing US national debt and falling dollar and together with Russia China and many others will watch and enjoy.

The Lowest form of Stupidity is Weakness in the face of the enemy. It seems that the majority of the commentary here is exemplary of this stupidity. Authoritarian strongmen like Putin respect only strength.

Well Bill the only Authoritarian strongman I've seen lately has come the "Great Republic of Texas" as some of your fellow posters like to call their home.

Funny how those sucking off defense jobs always think more military hardware is a great idea! Well, put your pea brain in gear and think about diplomacy! China one of our former great authoritarian led enemy is not our number one trading partner would you like to provoke them also?

We are the greatest military power on the planet right now and you want to keep throwing money for new war gadgets?

When the military/industrial complex war mentality causes the next depression perhaps you'll take your head out of the sand and ask – how did we get here?

Placing a missile defense ring on Russia's border prods the Russian paranoid mentality after all they almost were extinguished as a nation in WW2. So we have a fatally flawed missile defense system being deployed even though it doesn't work and we get all excited about Putin.

All you defense contractors on here need to find a "productive job" and stop sucking off my tax dollars!

Manufacturing goods creates wealth not war disposables, you Rudy supporters need a lesson in economics!