A PERTINENT WARNING.

The Defense Secretary Leon Penatta's assessment of the "trigger cuts across the board" painted a grim picture for the United States, if the special committee, set up after the debt ceiling and deficit reduction talks failed in Washington D.C. a few months ago.

That special committee, now commonly known as the Super Committee, has been assigned to reduce the national deficit by $1.2 trillion dollars, with Nov. 23rd. 2011, fixed as the deadline for the committee. Failing to do so would cause the deficit to be slashed by a "trigger" measure that would automatically and indiscriminately apply the cuts.

The Super Committee, comprised of 6 Democrats and 6 Republicans, has met behind closed doors for the last eight weeks, deliberating on how to come up with the proposed amount in cuts, in order to stop the indiscriminate measure from being used, starting in the following year.

The reductions should come from the entitlement programs, namely, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and other discretionary spending by the government.

The defense department came under the mandatory spending of the administration, but it would be affected anyhow to make up for the overall deficit cuts. However, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that any serious reduction of the military budget would force his department "to rethink its strategy."

"We would have to formulate a new security strategy that accepted substantial risk of not meeting our defense needs. A sequestration budget is not one that I could recommend," said Panetta, among other statements designed to convince the Super Committee to move to beat the deadline. If not, the consequences would be desastrous for U.S. National Security.

The bigger picture was even more foreboding in a Fox News article (11/15/11) with, "the Pentagon faces some $500 billion in reductions in projected spending over 10 years -- on top of the $450 billion already under way."

A statement, which has every indication that any additional cut would be more than devastating; and adding by quoting the Defense Secretary speculatively as saying,

"The number of U.S. ground forces would drop to levels not seen since 1940, the Navy would drop to the smallest number of ships since 1915 and the Air Force would be the smallest ever, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said," the article continued.

The end product of all that was not something to toy with, given that the Super Committee has to endeavor to find a solution to an issue as dire as bringing the national deficit down in a reasonable fashion to avoid future catastrophes to the nation's defense and security; and that the committee must rush to do something very effective than kicking the can down the road.

Otherwise the outcome would cost more, in terms of the military having shortages in personnel, and the national defense being short handed of important strategic weaponry of all types, needed here at home and abroad; thus the stakes were too high, as they would put the United States in an unnecessary and great jeopardy.

It (U.S.) was doing so at a time, when the world was becoming increasingly dangerous, such as North Korea using all its resources to become a military power, and Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The Super Committee must do all it possibly could to reach a compromise on this particular matter, for the sake of the nation.