Man, you guy's need to ease up on each other a bit. Dale, I think you could forgive db on a technicality in quick one off dbis post. I think he was generalizing and I understood his point and it wasn't about ICBMs per se.

But I also understand yours and I didn't see what the big deal was about the National Security Act. Getting our services to cooperate with one another was a result of lessons learned from WWII IMO. And while we may have tripled our defense budget, perhaps there was a reason. We came close to getting caught completely off guard. And I for one don't think that was lost on Eisenhower either, as much as he wished it weren't so.

So was Ike a 60s leftist like Oliver Stone? Note some key elements of Ike's thinking:

- Eisenhower didn't believe the Military Industrial Complex was to blame for the Cold War. He laid the blame on communism: "a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method."

- Eisenhower felt the Military Industrial Complex was necessary.

- Eisenhower felt the influence of the Military Industrial Complex might be "sought or unsought." For 60s leftists, "unsought" power for the Military Industrial Complex was inconceivable. A principled Republican, Ike was also skeptical of agricultural and research programs fostered by the federal government. He did not consider military industrial interests uniquely insidious, but rather he distrusted government expansion generally.

(http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm)