Paul Hughes

The debt deal President Obama signed into law yesterday may bring about the end of years of huge Pentagon budgets. The Pentagon will need to slash $350 billion from the defense budget over the next decade, and that number could potentially increase to $600 billion. If the joint bipartisan committee created under the debt plan fails to reach an agreement on future spending cuts, a "trigger" mechanism will force across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion over the next decade. While supporters say this is these cuts are overdue, critics and defense hawks argue they will undermine national security.

When lawmakers are looking at ways to balance the budget, the gargantuan amount of military and defense spending would seem an obvious choice. The Fiscal Commission has found nearly $100 billion in potential cutbacks within the military apparatus by 2015, which include reducing the size of the Navy, rethinking health care benefits for veterans and pulling troops out of bases in Europe and South Korea.

Another bipartisan group, the Debt Reduction Task Force, has gone even further. They released a report on Wednesday calling for a freeze of all military spending, and reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to 30,000 by the year 2013. If Congress approved all of these proposed defense cuts, what effect would it have on America and its ability to defend itself in the future?  

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The Bush Administration's handling of the war in Iraq has been called into question right from the start. Filmmaker Charles Ferguson sought answers inside the White House, the Pentagon, and Baghdad’s Green Zone, interviewing retired Colonel Paul Hughes and other high-ranking officials to find out exactly how an initial military ...