perfidy

Buckethead, budget cuts are only half the picture, and the cuts could always have been vetoed by Jeb if he so desired. Furthermore, Pres. Rice in her one term, for all her talk of interstellar security, seemed more than willing to extend the already thin Fleet beyond its capabilities with police actions on every podunk world this side of the Coal Sack. If they weren't already committed in so many systems, it might have been easier NOT to get involved in rearguard actions against local enemies. I think THAT is the very nexus of the problem.

Need I remind you that since Pres. Clinton (shudder) took office, more than twenty new ships of the line have been sent toward the Coal Sack? Need I remind you that it would not now be too late, that those ships would not be all but lost, if it had not been for Bush/Rice's neo-interventionist, Imperial, very hands-on domestic policy (sending our own troops against New Scotland!! Seriously, now!!) sapping the once-mighty strength of the Murcheson Fleet.

There might be hundreds of people I would rather have in charge than our current President, but not even Washington, Jackson, or Grant could do anything more than delay the day our skies blacken with the shapes of the filthy, three-armed menace that will so soon erase us from the face of the Universe.

[moreover] "A Mote In God's Eye" might be pretty good, but Dan Simmon's "Hyperion" and its sequels beats it all to hell on all fronts.