1. The protective gear thing was always bogus. Did everyone in the military have the best protective gear or armored vehicles? No, they had whatever had been determined to be adequate for the job. Of course, as the new war waged they piled more and more protective gear on us and upgraded equipment at a rate I'd never seen.
2. VA provides tremendous support to recent veterans, my father who only served four years got tremendous care from the VA as well. I do think many older veterans have had problems and like any large government agency it's never going to be perfect. Veterans are also defrauding taxpayers at an alarming rate but that's another topic.
3. Mostly valid point on R&D and your other points aren't invalid. It's just that many make the military out to be this sacred cow and there is a ton of misinformation designed to make the issue an emotional one rather than a logical one.
The real depletion in the military has come from the feeling of a lack of leadership in Washington, a sense of hopelessness with regards to the mission, and the fact that political correctness trumps reality.
With regards to Trump's speech, I mostly liked it. It is refreshing to have a president not bound by the constraints of political correctness. Some (I watched it at school) laughed a bit as he came out waiving and thumbs up but I pointed out that he was the only person to take that stage that acknowledged the crowd and I thought that was kind of cool.
My positing with Trump has pretty much been I don't believe he'll do half of what he says and I'm scared he'll actually do half of it. Now that he's elected and sworn in my position is he has four years and can be judged based on his record. And, besides, nobody has greater ability.
"I would rather claim to be an uneducated man than be mal-educated and claim to be otherwise." - Wookie 03:16
