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http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2...gop_field.html

Rudy's Historic Rewrite

Giuliani falsely blamed President Clinton for cuts in the military that
happened mostly under a Republican administration:
Giuliani: Bill Clinton cut the military drastically. It's called the peace
dividend, one of those nice-sounding phrases, very devastating. It was a
25,
30 percent cut in the military. President Bush has never made up for that.
We - our Army had been at 725,000; it's down to 500,000.
Actually, most of the cutting to which Giuliani refers occurred during the
administration of George H.W. Bush. At the end of fiscal year 1993
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/Hst0993.pdf
(which
was Bush's last one in office), the Army had 572,423 active-duty
soldiers -
a far cry from 725,000. In fact, to get to that number, one has to go back
to 1990
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/Hst0990.pdf,
during
the first gulf war. Moreover, Clinton's cuts in the military, while large,
were nowhere close to 25 percent to 30 percent. Between 1993 and 2001
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/M05/hst0901.pdf, the Army went
from
572,423 to 480,801, which is a decline of 16 percent. The entire military
went from 1,705,103 to 1,385,116, a decrease of 18.8 percent.

Compare that with the far larger cuts made during the first Bush
administration: In 1989
http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/history/Hst0989.pdf, the
military stood at 2,130,229 and the Army had 769,741 soldiers. By 1993,
those numbers had declined by 19.9 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively.

And as we've pointed out before
http://www.factcheck.org/more_mitt_missteps.html, it was the first Bush
administration - specifically then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney - that
began bragging openly of the peace dividend.


Right. The first Bush administration reduced defense to a level appropriate
to a post-Cold War world. The Clinton administration reduced defense below
that level.