West central Missouri Congressman Ike Skelton, Missouri’s top man on military matters, defends his record of voting to keep more troops in the military when everyoneelse was calling for fewer. Skelton says everyone thought the U.S. could get rid of its large military when the first Gulf War was over and the threat of communism melted away. But he says he kept calling for a large military, even through the 1990s when the drawdown continued. Skelton says in the early 1990s, he disagreed with then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney who called for more reliance on the National Guard and Reserves should a war break out. And Skelton insists he also fought troop reductions all through the Clinton Administration. He says he’s finally found enough other voices in Congress who agree with him, and 30,000 more soldiers over the next three years for the Army have been approved.
