“I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Paul Selva stated during a Pentagon press briefing in early February. “I stand here today a person that’s worn this uniform for 35 years. At no time in my career have I been more confident than this instant in saying we have the most powerful military on the face of the planet.” The American public, it seems, would beg to differ. According to a to a Gallup pollconducted the same week as Selva’s testimony, just 49 percent of Americans “think the United States is number one in the world militarily,” the fewest since the question was first asked in 1993. An equal number of Americans (49 percent) believed that the United States was “only one of several leading military powers.”

Republicans Won’t Stop Saying Our Military Is Weak
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/18/republicans-wont-stop-saying-our-military-is-weak/