QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 8:54 A.M. ET:  Related to the post just below, from superb defense reporter Bill Gertz, at Commentary:

For the past five and a half years, the United States military has suffered the devastating effects of hundreds of billions of dollars in budget cuts. At the same time, China’s armed forces—both conventional and nuclear—have made dramatic gains. The People’s Liberation Army was derided a decade ago by some China-watchers as a “junkyard army” incapable of coming close to matching the military prowess of the U.S. Army. Today, the PLA boasts new strategic capabilities that validate Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s words about the new era of declining American military dominance.

The new Chinese military is armed with highly sophisticated weaponry. They include cyber-warfare forces capable of crippling American electrical and financial infrastructures from computer keyboards in Shanghai as well as precision-guided anti-satellite missiles that can quickly enfeeble the U.S. military’s unparalleled ability to combine long-distance war-fighting with precision attack.

The new power balance—a weakening American military facing a rising Chinese power—has dire implications for global peace and stability. Furthermore, the sharp decline in funds for U.S. military operations and modernization, coupled with China’s rapid buildup of forces, has rendered President Obama’s premier foreign-policy initiative, to strategically shift toward the Asia Pacific and away from conflicts in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, all but impossible to achieve.

COMMENT:  That is the plain, unvarnished truth.  It is terrible...unless you're a member of the Democratic Party's leftist establishment.  To them, this is what victory looks like.

April 25, 204