No, we can't blame it all on Clinton's cutbacks. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991, there was widespread agreement that we no longer needed to maintain an active duty force strength of approximately 2 million. The Bush 41 administration annouced a 25% reduction in force levels, affecting both active duty and reserve units. The cutbacks began in 1992 before Clinton was elected. By 2000, the cutbacks were largely over with the final drawdown of active duty levels being roughly 28%, about 60,000 more than the Bush 41 administration planned. That's about the same number of personnel as you'd find in 4 Army divisions.

Congress did vote to authorize a temporary increase in Army force levels, but it takes time to recruit, train, equip, and base those forces. Things like this don't happen overnight. At the same time, the Air Force and perhaps the Navy is still undergoing some cutbacks in career fields no longer deemed necessary.

Humvees were bought to replace the old Jeeps. Like the Jeeps, Humvees weren't armored simply because the military didn't think they'd be sending them into hostile fire. For hostile missions, they planned on using armored vehicles like the Bradley and the old M113 APC. While adding armor to a Humvee greatly reduces it's vulnerability to small arms fire, nothing is without cost when it comes to logistics or maneuverability. Bureaucracies being what they are, it took time to get serious about armoring the Humvees. The latest numbers that I've seen indicate that the overwhelming majority of Humvees in Iraq have been armored.

Have our standards changed since WWII? Definitely. The only ones who wore body armor back then were aircrews who had "flak jackets." All infantry soldiers and Marines had no more protection than provided by the "steel pot" helmet. Our tanks were deathtraps and many of the planes weren't much better, especially before the end of 1943. American leaders knew we'd take casualties and accepted losses that would be unthinkable today. But then, some 16 million men served in the American military back then (out of a US population of about 120 million). Things were different.