The United States military has been “gutted”.

The military is a “disaster”.

The Marines are not ready to deploy.

This is a time for a president to “rebuild” the U.S. military.

If they win, the military will continue to “decline”.

If you’ve been following the Republican and Democratic races for the presidential nomination these are all lines that will most likely sound familiar. Because they’re all lines that came straight from the mouth of a handful of the candidates. Basically, they’re trying to paint a picture that the U.S. military is weak and broken and meager, and that it needs a radical facelift. A notion that, if applied, would have to be executed by doing one thing above all: fattening the Pentagon’s budget.

But at $582.7 billion (announced by the Pentagon just last week) the American military budget already dwarfs the other global superpowers many times over. After the U.S. it’s China, at $129.4 billion, followed by Saudi Arabia at $80.8 billion and Russia at a mere $70 billion.

So it’s no surprise that a U.S. general came out recently and called out the political rhetoric that his country’s military is foundering and sickly. U.S. Air Force General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs wasn’t having it at all.

“I won’t be argumentative, but I will take umbrage with the notion that our military has been gutted,” Selva said. “So 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.”

This from the Washington Post:

Selva added that the military still has challenges and is facing a global set of threats, including terrorism that “consumes the readiness of our force to do the other tasks that we are given as part of our mission.” But he added that “we are far from gutted,” and said that the Pentagon has “the most flexible and determined Air Force on the planet, the most capable Navy on the planet, and a Marine Corps no one can match.”

Added Selva: “I don’t engage in politics. This is the reality of the men and women that serve in our Army, our Navy, our Air Force and our Marine Corps. They’re the best the world has to offer, and we’re going to keep them that way.”