Obama and his Incoherent Foreign Policy

Again, an over educated twit does not a good president make.  For all his education, he is still incoherent in defining a policy and deciding upon a policy.  Talk about how grandiose Bush was ... Obama makes Bush look downright bi-partisan.

This magazine is not known for being conservative nor even centrist.  It is far more often labeled as left or far left ...



Togetherness in Libya




Barack Obama’s awfully big change in America’s use of force



Mar 31st 2011
The Economist


IT IS Pavlovian. As soon as a president does something new in foreign policy, the world wants to know whether he has invented a new “doctrine”. The short answer in the case of Libya is that Barack Obama has not invented a new doctrine so much as repudiated an old one. What he is also doing, however, is challenging an American habit of mind.

The doctrine Mr Obama has repudiated is the one attributed to Colin Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and George W. Bush’s transparently miserable secretary of state when America invaded Iraq in 2003. That held, among other things, that America ought to go to war only when its vital interests are threatened, when the exit strategy is clear, and when it can apply overwhelming force to ensure that its aims are achieved. Nothing could be more different from the account Mr Obama gave Americans on March 28th of his reasons for using military force in Libya. He does not believe that America’s vital interests are at stake (though some “important” ones are); the exit strategy is not entirely clear (Colonel Qaddafi must go, but who knows when, and not as a direct result of American military action); and the force America is willing to apply (no boots on the ground) is strictly limited.

None of this should be a surprise. In “The Audacity of Hope”, the bestseller Mr Obama wrote as a senator in 2006, he set out a theory of military intervention. Like all sovereign nations, he argued, America has the unilateral right to defend itself from attack, and to take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat. But beyond matters of clear self-defence, it would “almost always” be in its interest to use force multilaterally. This would not mean giving the UN Security Council a veto over its actions, or rounding up Britain and Togo and doing as it pleased. It would mean following the example of the first President Bush in the first Gulf war—“engaging in the hard diplomatic work of obtaining most of the world’s support for our actions”.

The virtue of such an approach was that America had much to gain in a world that lived by rules. By upholding such rules itself, it could encourage others to do so too. A multilateral approach would also lighten America’s burden at times of war. This might be “a bit of an illusion”, given the modest power of most American allies. But in many future conflicts the military operation was likely to cost less than the aftermath: training police, switching the lights back on, building democracy and so forth.

The president, it now emerges, remembers exactly what he wrote. He hesitated about whether to act in Libya (just ask the French and British, who egged him on but came close to losing hope), but he was always clear about how. All the conditions he wished for in that book five years ago have come to pass. In this week’s speech he ticked them methodically off: “an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi’s forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground.” Under such circumstances, he said, for America to turn a blind eye to the fate of Benghazi would have been “a betrayal of who we are”.

Why does this theory of intervention, and the noble sentiment attached to it, fail to qualify as a “doctrine”? Because it is too elastic to provide a guide to future action. Would America “betray” itself by turning a blind eye to atrocities under different, less favourable, circumstances? So it seems. It has, after all, done so before, in Rwanda and Darfur—and Mr Obama appears to accept that it might have to do so again when, say, an alliance would be damaged, as in Bahrain, or the job is too hot to handle, as in Syria or Iran. Also unclear is whether an American interest must also be at stake before Mr Obama invokes the moral case for action. Conveniently (for the purpose of selling this particular war), the president detects a “strategic interest” in preventing Colonel Qaddafi from chilling the wider Arab spring, so nobody knows.

In fairness, elasticity is not a sin; and Mr Obama does not claim to have invented anything he calls a “doctrine”. The worst you can say about his approach is that it is merely commonsensical: decide the issues case-by-case while holding some idea of values and interests in mind. Many who say they want more consistency than this (typically by asking some variant of “What about Zimbabwe?”) do so not because they really believe that foreign policy can be run by an algorithm but in order to embarrass Mr Obama in any way they can. Prize chump in the case of Libya this past fortnight has been Newt Gingrich, the Republican presidential hopeful who demanded consistency, called for intervention and turned on a dime the instant Mr Obama answered.

After you, Sarko

More significant, however, is that habit of mind. In Libya Mr Obama is challenging the assumption of global leadership America has taken for granted ever since the second world war. America has joined coalitions before, but never under a president quite so adamant that America is not in charge—even if the military burden-sharing is indeed a bit of an illusion.

Most Republicans and quite a few Democrats hate this. Mr Obama’s hope is that America’s low profile will make the war more palatable not only to the Muslim world but also to the economy-fixated voters at home who question whether America can still afford to play its traditional leadership role. What he may soon discover is that modesty extracts a price of its own. By sharing the leadership with others, he has made his policy hostage to the limited mandate (no use of force for regime change) imposed by the United Nations and the limited means of his allies in Europe and the Middle East. It may not be a doctrine, it should not be a surprise, but nobody can deny that it is a gamble.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
obama

China: A threat to world peace?

China has carrier-killer missile, U.S. admiral says



By Bill Gertz
The Washington Times
2:26 p.m., Monday, December 27, 2010




China's military is deploying a new anti-ship ballistic missile that can sink U.S. aircraft carriers, a weapon that specialists say gives Beijing new power-projection capabilities that will affect U.S. support for its Pacific allies.

Adm. Robert F. Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, disclosed to a Japanese newspaper on Sunday that the new anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is now in the early stages of deployment after having undergone extensive testing.

"An analogy using a Western term would be 'initial operational capability (IOC),' whereby I think China would perceive that it has an operational capability now, but they continue to develop it," Adm. Willard told the Asahi Shimbun. "I would gauge it as about the equivalent of a U.S. system that has achieved IOC."

The four-star admiral, who has been an outspoken skeptic of China's claims that its large-scale military buildup is peaceful, said the U.S. deployment assessment is based on China's press reports and continued testing.

The new weapon, the "D" version of China's DF-21 medium-range missile, involves firing the mobile missile into space, returning it into the atmosphere and then maneuvering it to its target

Military officials consider using ballistic missiles against ships at sea to be a difficult task that requires a variety of air, sea and space sensors, navigation systems and precision guidance technology - capabilities not typical of other Chinese missiles.

Asked about the integrated system, Adm. Willard said that "to have something that would be regarded as in its early operational stage would require that system be able to accomplish its flight pattern as designed, by and large."

The admiral said that while the U.S. thinks "that the component parts of the anti-ship ballistic missile have been developed and tested," China's testing has not gone as far as a live-fire test attack on an actual ship.

"We have not seen an over-water test of the entire system," he said.

Adm. Willard said he did not view the new missile as a greater threat to U.S. and allied forces than China's submarine forces, which also have been expanded greatly in the past decade.

"Anti-access/area denial, which is a term that was relatively recently coined, is attempting to represent an entire range of capabilities that China has developed and that other countries have developed," he said.

"It´s not exclusively China that has what is now being referred to as A2/AD capability. But in China´s case, it´s a combination of integrated air-defense systems; advanced naval systems, such as the submarine; advanced ballistic-missile systems, such as the anti-ship ballistic missile, as well as power-projection systems into the region," he said.

The new weapons can threaten "archipelagos" in Asia, such as Japan and Philippines, as well as Vietnam and other states that "are falling within the envelope of this, of an A2/AD capability of China," Adm. Willard said.

"That should be concerning - and we know is concerning - to those countries," he said.

Adm. Willard said the new weapons are "an expanded capability that ranges beyond the first island chain and overlaps countries in the region."

"For that reason, it is concerning to Southeast Asia, [and] it remains concerning to the United States."

Andrew S. Erickson, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, said the admiral's comments on the missile deployment confirm earlier reports that the Chinese are moving ahead with the DF-21D missile.

"China must have conducted a rigorous program of tests, most likely including flight tests, to demonstrate that the DF-21D [missile] is mature enough for initial production, deployment and employment," Mr. Erickson said in an e-mail.

Mr. Erickson estimates that at least one unit of China's Second Artillery Corps, as its missile forces are called, must be equipped with the road-mobile system.

"While doubtless an area of continuous challenge and improvement, the DF-21D´s command, control, communications, computers, information, surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure must be sufficient to support attempts at basic carrier strike group targeting," he said.

Mr. Erickson said, based on Chinese missile-deployment patterns, that the new missile system likely will be fielded in "waves" at different units to meet deterrence objectives.

Military specialists have said the DF-21D deployment is a potent new threat because it will force U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups to operate farther from hot spots in the western Pacific.

Currently, U.S. military strategy calls for the Pentagon to send several strike groups to waters near Taiwan in the event China follows through on threats to use force to retake the island. The lone U.S. aircraft carrier strike group based permanently in the region is the USS George Washington, whose home port is inYokosuka, Japan. A second carrier is planned for Hawaii or Guam.

Carrier forces also provide air power in the event of a new war in Korea and are used to assure freedom of navigation, a growing problem as the result of recent Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea.

Adm. Willard did not discuss what U.S. countermeasures the Navy has taken against the new anti-ship missile. U.S. naval task forces include ships equipped with the Aegis system designed to shoot down ballistic missiles.

Wallace "Chip" Gregson, assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs, said in a speech earlier this month that China's new anti-access and area-denial weapons, including the DF-21D, "threaten our primary means of projecting power: our bases, our sea and air assets, and the networks that support them."

He warned that China's military buildup could "upend the regional security balance."

Richard Fisher, a China military-affairs specialist, said the new ASBM is only one part of a series of new Chinese weapons that threaten the region.

"When we add the ASBM to the PLA's [People's Liberation Army's] growing anti-satellite capabilities, growing numbers of submarines, and quite soon, its fifth-generation fighter, we are seeing the erection of a new Chinese wall in the western Pacific, for which the Obama administration has offered almost nothing in defensive response," Mr. Fisher said.

"Clearly, China's communist leadership is not impressed by the administration's ending of F-22 production, its retirement of the Navy's nuclear cruise missile, START Treaty reductions in U.S. missile warheads, and its refusal to consider U.S. space warfare capabilities. Such weakness is the surest way to invite military adventurism from China," he added.


Mr. Fisher said the Pentagon should mount a crash program to develop high-technology energy weapons, like rail guns and lasers in response to the new ASBMs.

Mark Stokes, a retired Air Force officer who has written extensively on the new missile, said the new deployment is a concern.

"China's ability to place at risk U.S. and other nations' maritime surface assets operating in the western Pacific and South China Sea is growing and closer to becoming a reality than many may think," Mr. Stokes said.

*****************************************

The Chinese believe that humanity began in China.  In the alternative, they believe that their was a 2nd site of origin and China was that 2nd site.  They believe with more certitude than anything Obama is certain of, that their civilization is the oldest, that man has lived and farmed in the area we now call China for a hundred thousand years.  Man was civilized in China before anywhere else.  Whether the Xia dynasty, Shang, or the Qin, or Ming ... China's history and the timetable the history has played out, is long and methodical.  No Emperor gave up one day or conquered the next.  China's history plays out over 1000 years at a time versus the time keeping done in the West - 1 year, 50 years, 200 years.  Our Kings and Lords conquered, controlled, and were done away with in 100 years.  In China, 100 years is the time it takes to get the engine started, and then they warm up for another 500 years before they get going.  We have utterly no comprehension of this and consequently are at a disadvantage.

When you ask a 19 year old today (in Los Angeles) what LONG TERM planning means to them, they will perhaps tell you 5 years, 10 years, 20 years max.  China looks at 100 years as short term and when you regard everything in such time structure, there is no way anyone can defeat them - they will wait until 10 generations are dead and whatever the question was, is long forgotten - and then they will act.

What if China wanted the area around Irkusk (was under Soviet control and then fell to Russian control) and the Soviets were prepared for war over the area (including Irkusk) - if you were China, what would you do to get the area?  From reasonable and plausible to a little silly.

On the silly side - every month I would move 3 inches outside my border into Russian controlled areas.  In one year 3 feet but when you are talking about really big mountains, 3 feet means little, BUT ... 3 feet per year X 100 years = 300 feet.  A whopping football field almost.  Still not significant  X 200.  Ok, so they don't get as far as Irkusk, but one day Russia looks at some old maps and realizes the Chinese foot shops are a lot closer than they were.

What if China wanted, say, an island.  4 inches a year X 100 years = 400 inches.  30+ feet doesn't get you much.  What if you took 10 inches a year or every 3-4 years you took a foot.  No one would notice very quickly.  What if you moved your military 1 foot closer every 9 years, to camps on the opposite side of the island on the mainland.  I doubt a US administation would notice.  In 100 years they are now close enough to throw stones at the island. 

What if the Chinese bought up trillions in US debt, had trillions to spend on military and technology, wanted Taiwan worse than anyone has ever wanted another thing or person - took control of the Panama canal (to close it down at the opportune moment) and Long Beach harbor in the US (to disrupt trade and the economy), purchased the debt of Europe - and then set about creating weapons that are only useful against aircraft carriers (and surprisingly the US has the largest aircraft carrier fleet on earth and we have a military alliance with Taiwan).  So when the day comes - China uses all its energy to threaten Europe to prevent the US from intervening (or else) and threatens the US not to intervene or China will wreck our economy, the harbor is closed and shipping is redirected and costs escalate and the American people are concerned about the costs they are paying, and the Panama Canal closes and shipping is stalled, oil is stalled, the US navy has to sail further, and fleets used elsewhere in the world are re-directed - while China has a aircraft carrier missile to sink any ships in the vicinity (with 8-10k sailors aboard) ... and the thousands of aircraft the Chinese are building mount an aerial assault on Taiwan while several million Chinese soldiers land on the shore of Taiwan and take the island.

All that can happen in 24 hours - but I suppose it is fine to pretend and hope and dismiss the concerns ... until the Chinese are telling our President what he can and cannot say, and by then it will be a little late.












 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
china

Canada to the US: Mind Your Own Business (2002)

Angry Bush pushed NATO into Iraq, angry that the US asked Canada to increase its defense spending, angry period.  And perhaps this article is a good example why Canadians feel so defensive toward Canada and hostile toward the US.  Perhaps.  Until you read the very last paragraph/sentence in this article and the US request to increase spending makes more sense.

While the administrations have changed since this article was published, the attitudes have not, and are worth noting - again, and again, and again.





Canada to U.S.: Mind your business


Don't tell us how to run our military, defence minister admonishes U.S. president. Second Canadian official calls Bush 'a moron' for pushing Iraq onto NATO agenda


Robert Fife
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, November 21, 2002


PRAGUE -- Defence Minister John McCallum bluntly told George W. Bush yesterday to stop lecturing Canada about increased defence spending after the U.S. president urged the federal government and the NATO allies to boost their military budgets to confront new international threats from terrorism and rogue states.

The Bush administration, particularly through Paul Cellucci, its ambassador to Canada, has been calling on Canada to increase defence spending and to purchase new heavy-lift aircraft so it does not have to rely on the U.S. to transport Canadian troops.

Mr. McCallum said yesterday he is fed up with the Americans hectoring Canada about its low defence expenditures, even though he himself has been publicly lobbying for greater military spending.

"I would not urge the president of the United States or the U.S. ambassador to Canada to do my job to ask for more defence spending. I think that is a Canadian matter," Mr. McCallum told reporters.

He added: "I think a number of Canadians were a little bit ticked off when the ambassador keeps pushing."

"It is a made-in-Canada decision, so while Mr. Bush may be asking for what I am asking for, I am not asking for his help."

On the eve of today's opening of the 19-member NATO summit in the Czech capital, Mr. Bush made an impassioned appeal for the western alliance to strengthen its military "to confront terror camps in remote regions or hidden laboratories of outlawed regimes."

Mr. Bush said NATO needs to develop new capabilities, including a 21,000-member rapid reaction force, more special forces, better precision weapons and more modern command structures if it is to win the war against global terrorism and rogue states, like Iraq.

The president did not directly name Canada, but it has the third-lowest military budget in the NATO alliance, spending more than only Luxembourg and Iceland, which does not have a military.

"NATO forces must be better able to fight side by side. Those forces must be more mobile and more swiftly deployed," he told the Atlantic Youth Council. "For some alliance members, this will require higher defence spending. For all of us, it will require more effective defence spending with each nation having the tools and technology to fight and win a new kind of war."

At a later news conference, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien would not comment on Mr. Bush's appeal, other than to say he would like to pump more money into the military, but the government has many other priorities.

"Me too, I would like to spend more money on defence. I'd like to spend more money on everything, but we have to make these decisions when come the budget," he said.

Earlier in the day, a senior Canadian official, who asked not to be identified, called Mr. Bush "a moron" because of his efforts to push the war against Iraq to the top of NATO's agenda. The summit was to focus on expansion and moderation of the alliance, but Mr. Bush has used his clout to make Iraq the dominant issue at the meeting.

NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson and the Liberal-dominated defence committees of the House of Commons and the Senate have all deplored Canada's $12-billion military budget, which represents only 1.1 per cent of gross domestic product spending, half the NATO average of 2.13.

But Canadian officials argued the "pure GDP numbers is a pretty crude indicator" of Canada's military capabilities, noting the Canadian military has played a role in almost every major United Nations or NATO operation from Bosnia to the war in Afghanistan.

Mr. Chrétien also picked up on that theme, saying the Americans appreciate the role that Canada has played in operations around the world.

"The Americans always compliment when we participate with them. When we were in Kosovo, we were the third country with the greatest number of sorties and we were complimented by everyone there by the effectiveness of our troops. We did the same thing in Bosnia. In Afghanistan, our troops did very well," he said.

Mr. Bush said NATO, devised as a static defence against the former Soviet Union, is outdated and its military forces are incapable of responding quickly to military threats outside Europe, such as Afghanistan.

"When forces were needed quickly to operate in Afghanistan, NATO's options were limited," he said.

"The allies need more special operations forces, better precision strike capabilities and more modern command structures. Few NATO members will have state-of-the-art capabilities in all of these areas, I recognize that, but every nation should develop some."

The Senate defence committee recently called for a $4-billion annual increase in the Armed Forces budget, while Liberal MPs on the Commons defence committee have urged the prime minister not to sacrifice Canada's military to fund a social agenda.

But officials close to Mr. Chrétien say he's reluctant to approve a substantial boost in spending for Canada's Armed Forces, preferring to pump money from the federal surplus into social programs and infrastructure improvements for cities.

Mr. McCallum has been seeking a modest increase in the defence budget of $1 billion and is prepared to find savings of up to $250 million from within the Defence department, sources say.

Since 1994, the government has reduced defence spending by 23 per cent and cut the Forces' regular personnel to 57,000 from 87,600 in 1990. Canada has the world's 54th-largest military and 77th-largest reserve force, even though it has the 34th-largest population and is a member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations.

A bevy of military analysts, most recently the Council on Canadian Security in the 21st Century and the Atlantic Institute, have also warned Canada is at risk of being unable to defend itself unless it increases spending. Military experts say Canada needs to double its equipment budget to $3.5 billion annually just to replace aging equipment.

Behind the scenes, Defence department officials readily acknowledge that military capability has suffered while other allies, in particular the United States, have made substantial improvements.



Canada also knows the US will defend it, if and when it is ever attacked.









 
 
 
 
 
 
 
canmada

US and China: Who Blinked?

US Refutes South Korean Media Report About Naval Exercise

Monday, October 25th, 2010


The U.S. military has refuted South Korean media reports that Seoul and Washington have called off plans to hold a major joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea this month, because there were no such plans.

A spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea told VOA Monday that no such exercise was set for this year. The spokesman said there is no exercise to cancel.

The Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean government anonymous sources Sunday as saying an exercise involving a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier had been postponed to avoid tensions on the Korean peninsula during the upcoming G20 summit in Seoul.

There was no official confirmation of the Yonhap report.

The U.S. and South Korea have been holding a series of joint military exercises as a warning to North Korea after the sinking of a South Korean warship.

An international investigation concluded that the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan with the loss of 46 lives was caused by a torpedo launched from a North Korean ship. Pyongyang has called the report a fabrication.

Heads of state of the world’s top 20 economies will meet in the South Korean capital November 11 to 12. The leaders are expected to discuss an agreement to reform the International Monetary Fund so that emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and Russia get more control in decision-making.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the 20 nations announced the agreement on the issue Saturday, on the last day of their conference in South Korean coastal city of Gyeongju.
 
 
**********************************************************
 
 
Reports: US, South Korea Cancel Naval Drill


Sunday, October 24th, 2010


South Korean media reported Sunday that Seoul and Washington have called off plans to hold a major joint naval exercise in the Yellow Sea this month.

Yonhap news agency quoted government sources as saying the exercise involving a U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been postponed to avoid tensions on the Korean peninsula during the upcoming G20 summit in Seoul.

There was no official confirmation of the reports.

The Chinese government has fiercely opposed the deployment of the U.S. aircraft carrier George Washington in the regional waters.

The U.S. and South Korea have been holding a series of joint military exercises as a warning to North Korea after the sinking of a South Korean warship.

An international investigation concluded that the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan was caused by a torpedo launched from a North Korean ship. Pyongyang has called the report a fabrication.

Heads of state of the world’s top 20 economies will meet in the South Korean capital November 11 to 12. The leaders are expected to discuss an agreement to reform the International Monetary Fund so that emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and Russia get more control in decision-making.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from the 20 nations announced the agreement on the issue Saturday, on the last day of their conference in South Korean coastal city of Gyeongju.






 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
china

Pakistan - Billions in Aid

Pretty shocking news statement. 

Good question - WHY????




Friday 22 October 2010

RFI


US to offer two billion dollars more military aid to Pakistan

The United States will offer two billion dollars in fresh military assistance to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. The move comes after controversy over Pakistani intelligence relations with the Taliban.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Pakistan

And So It Begins ...

There is NO WAY the United States of America and the 280 million or so citizens in this country can afford anything Obama has given us, and HE KNOWS IT.  So, he has to raise taxes and the first onslaught of these taxes is in the pipeline and due to hit sooner than later.  Many more taxes will be snuck in, using backdoor techniques, for example (and these are not under consideration by Obama):  the US Postal Stamp Collection Act will include a tax on children, the Farm Bill will include taxes on banks, the Defense Budget will include a tax on paper and books.  Yet taxes alone will not TRANSFORM America into Obama's ideal ... he must cut the military budget, slash it, all the while he will tell us the military is being trimmed, the fat is being cut off, it will be leaner and meaner ... which is another way of saying he and the liberals in his party are about to castrate the US military.  I have made this statement many times in the last months, and now the New York Times ........






July 22, 2010


Pentagon Faces Intensifying Pressures to Trim Budget

By THOM SHANKER and CHRISTOPHER DREW
The New York Times



WASHINGTON — After nearly a decade of rapid increases in military spending, the Pentagon is facing intensifying political and economic pressures to restrain its budget, setting up the first serious debate since the terrorist attacks of 2001 about the size and cost of the armed services.

Lawmakers, administration officials and analysts said the combination of big budget deficits, the winding down of the war in Iraq and President Obama’s pledge to begin pulling troops from Afghanistan next year were leading Congress to contemplate reductions in Pentagon financing requests.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has sought to contain the budget-cutting demands by showing Congress and the White House that he can squeeze more efficiency from the Pentagon’s bureaucracy and weapons programs and use the savings to maintain fighting forces.

But the increased pressure is already showing up in efforts by Democrats in Congress to move more quickly than senior Pentagon officials had expected in trimming the administration’s budget request for next year.

And in the longer term, with concern mounting about the government’s $13 trillion debt, a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission is warning that cuts in military spending could be needed to help the nation dig out of its financial hole.

“We’re going to have to take a hard look at defense if we are going to be serious about deficit reduction,” said Erskine B. Bowles, a chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who is a co-chairman of the deficit commission. Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire who is also on the debt commission, said that if the panel pushes for cuts in discretionary spending, “defense should be looked at,” perhaps through another base-closing commission.

Mr. Gates is calling for the Pentagon’s budget to keep growing in the long run at 1 percent a year after inflation, plus the costs of the war. It has averaged an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 7 percent a year over the last decade (nearly 12 percent a year without adjusting for inflation), including the costs of the wars. So far, Mr. Obama has asked Congress for an increase in total spending next year of 2.2 percent, to $708 billion — 6.1 percent higher than the peak under the Bush administration.

Mr. Gates is arguing that if the Pentagon budget is allowed to keep growing by 1 percent a year, he can find 2 percent or 3 percent in savings in the department’s bureaucracy to reinvest in the military — and that will be sufficient money to meet national security needs. In one of the paradoxes of Washington budget battles, Mr. Gates, even as he tries to forestall deeper cuts, is trying to kill weapons programs he says the military does not need over the objections of members of Congress who want to protect jobs.

Mr. Gates enjoys bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and has considerable sway within the administration. But while he may hold the line against major cuts for now, analysts say support for military spending could erode quickly once the Pentagon withdraws a substantial number of troops from Afghanistan.

“In the case of the Pentagon, they have been living very fat and very happy for so very long that they’ve almost lost touch with reality,” said Gordon Adams, who oversaw national-security budgets under President Clinton.

Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that he would be looking first at tax increases and changes in Social Security and Medicare to lower the deficit, and that there was “no way” Congress would make major cuts in the military while more than 100,000 troops were still at war. But once most of them return, “I’m pretty certain cuts are coming — in defense and the whole budget,” he said.

The course of the war in Afghanistan will no doubt have an impact on the debate, as might the outcome of the midterm elections and ultimately the 2012 presidential race.

But the first signs of pressure on military spending have surfaced, as both the House and the Senate are moving to trim the administration’s Pentagon budget request for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.

The Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee voted last week to cut $8 billion from the Pentagon’s request for an $18 billion increase in its basic operations.

Representative Norm Dicks, Democrat of Washington and chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, is planning to trim $7 billion from the administration’s budget request. “There’s a lot of support up here for restraint,” he said.

In the short run, the worries about the deficit could help Mr. Gates halt the two main arms programs he has identified this year — an alternate engine for the new Joint Strike Fighter and the purchase of five more C-17 cargo planes from Boeing.

General Electric and Rolls-Royce have been lobbying hard to save their engine, which would compete with another one for up to $100 billion of business.

Mr. Inouye said that with the administration’s opposition, “and faced with a deficit, that deal is dead.”

Mr. Gates sought to set the terms of the broader debate with a speech in May at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kan.

“Military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny,” Mr. Gates said. “The gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.”

Mr. Gates followed up with orders for the armed services and the Pentagon’s agencies to find $7 billion in spending cuts and efficiencies for 2012, growing to $37 billion annually by 2016.

Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, said the president fully supported Mr. Gates’s initiatives, which already have set in motion savings from canceling or trimming more three dozen weapons systems in 2009. “This is not business as usual,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Senior administration officials said they hoped Mr. Gates’s effort would help quiet critics who asked why military spending had been exempted from the president’s order for a 5 percent cut in the budgets of most domestic agencies.

At the moment, the administration projects that the Pentagon’s base budget and the extra war spending will peak at $708 billion in the coming fiscal year, though analysts say it is likely that the Pentagon will need at least $30 billion more in supplemental war financing then.

Two-thirds of Pentagon spending is on personnel costs. It is possible that the Pentagon will have to look for the first time at cuts to the health benefits provided to active and retired military personnel and their families.

Some analysts said the Pentagon would eventually come under pressure to reduce the size of the armed forces.

Mr. Adams, the Clinton administration budget official, wrote in a recent analysis that for “any real savings on defense budgets to occur, end strength must shrink.” But the Pentagon strongly opposes cutting the number of troops, said Peter R. Orszag, director of the president’s Office of Management and Budget.

“Secretary Gates and the military leadership have made it very clear that they do not support a reduction in end strength,” Mr. Orszag said.

He said there is little comparison to the last period of significant cuts in military spending and personnel — in the 1990s, after the collapse of communism.

“During the end of the cold war, one could imagine a significant downsizing of the American military,” Mr. Orszag said. “That is a fundamentally different proposition than the situation we find ourselves in today.”













and so it begins

Get in line - first Europe will falter, stumble, and fall ...

Britain no longer has the cash to defend itself from every threat, says Liam Fox



Britain cannot afford to protect itself against all potential threats to its security, Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, has warned.


By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
22 Jul 2010
The Telegraph



In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Dr Fox said the dire state of the public finances meant the Armed Forces could no longer be equipped to cover every conceivable danger.

Since the Second World War, the nation has maintained a force that can conduct all-out warfare, counter-insurgencies such as in Afghanistan or medium scale campaigns like the Falklands or Sierra Leone.

But Dr Fox has given the strongest signal yet that it will have to give up one or more of these capabilities, which have been maintained at the same time as contributing to collective security pacts such as Nato. “We don’t have the money as a country to protect ourselves against every potential future threat,” he said. “We just don’t have it.”

The military had to be configured only for “realistic potential future threats”, he said, hinting at a substantial cut to conventional forces such as tanks and fighter aircraft.

“We have to look at where we think the real risks will come from, where the real threats will come from and we need to deal with that accordingly. The Russians are not going to come over the European plain any day soon,” he added.

Dr Fox’s frank admission also casts doubt on the future of the 25,000 troops currently stationed in Germany. The Defence Secretary has previously said that he hoped to withdraw them at some point, leaving Britain without a presence in the country for the first time since 1945.

“I would say, what do Challenger tanks in Germany and the costs of maintaining them and the personnel required to train for them, what does that contribute to what’s happening in Afghanistan?” he asked.

The Ministry of Defence is facing a substantial squeeze on resources, with indications that 30,000 servicemen may be sacrificed to meet the Government’s stringent review of departmental budgets.

Dr Fox signalled in a speech at Farnborough air show this week that Britain’s fleets of warships, fighters and armoured vehicles would be reduced because the MoD’s equipment programme was “entirely unaffordable”.

A National Audit Office report on Tuesday also found that the MoD was already £500 million over budget for the current financial year with “insufficient funds to meet planned expenditure”.

There has been growing speculation that the Army could be reduced by a quarter of its strength to 75,000 under the defence review.

But Dr Fox insisted that no troops would be made redundant until the fighting in Afghanistan was over.

“Everything that we might want to do with the Army will be constrained by what’s happening in Afghanistan,” he said.

“Any changes will have to be phased in. But with the Army in particular the difficulties come with how stretched we currently are providing forces in Afghanistan.”

He added: “I did not come into politics to see reductions in the Armed Forces but I also did not come into politics to see the destruction of the economy.”

He described as “nonsense” the idea that the Ministry of Defence would sacrifice personnel before equipment to make savings to a budget shortfall estimated at £36 billion over the next decade.

“I am not planning for any particular size for the Army,” Dr Fox said. “This idea that we are coming at the review with a particular size for the Army or the Navy or the Air Force is nonsense.”

In the last week Dr Fox has been fighting the Treasury to ensure that cash for the replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent comes from outside the MoD’s core budget.

Asked if he would be prepared to resign if he did not get what he wanted, he said: “I am in the middle of complex negotiations and I am not in the business of megaphone diplomacy with the Treasury.

“The country is in an economic crisis, defence cannot be exempted from it.”

Despite the likelihood of a 20 per cent cut to the MoD’s £37 billion annual budget, he insisted that Britain would remain in the “first division” of armed forces alongside America.

“We have to keep sufficient land forces to hold territory if required, we have got to maintain enough maritime power and we have got to maintain air power to maintain air superiority.”

Dr Fox hopes that substantial savings can be found by renegotiating defence contracts. Companies supplying the MoD have been threatened with the loss of lucrative orders unless they lower prices.

“Either companies reduce the costs or we cancel whole projects,” he said. “Either we cut costs or cut programmes. The defence industry will understand that helping us over the short term will give them greater security over the longer term.”

It has been suggested that the Defence Secretary favours the Navy above the other two Services.

But Dr Fox criticised the fleet’s obsession with hi-tech ships such as the Type 45 destroyer, described by BAe Systems, its makers, as the most advanced warship of its kind, or Astute submarines.

“If I had a criticism of the Navy it is that it’s been too centred on a high specification end and not had sufficient platform numbers (ships) in a world that requires presence,” he explained.

He also questioned the number of different transport aircraft required by the RAF. It has a fleet of 36 Hercules, planes, seven C17 Globemasters and about 22 A400M transporters on order.

“Do we have to have all these different fleets or can we reduce them down?” Dr Fox asked.

“Fewer types means less training and fewer spare parts.” He admitted that for a political “hawk” the prospect of reducing the Forces was difficult.

“It is very difficult for someone like me who is a fiscal hawk and hawkish on defence policy to arrive here at a time when the previous government have bankrupted us,” Dr Fox said. “It is really difficult and we will have to make really hard choices.

“Labour have left us with such a car crash that next year the interest on the national debt will be nearly one and half times the defence budget. That is not sustainable.”














military

War on the Military: It Continues ...

Amazing bit of wordsmithing, but that is exactly what is happening.





War on the military-industrial complex


By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
May 28, 2010



If your family spent a majority of its disposable income on groceries, and you were looking to tighten your belt, you might start by taking a scalpel to your grocery budget.

If Republicans are serious about reining in our out-of-control federal spending, they ought to start with the spending item that takes up 56 percent of our discretionary spending -- defense. Conservatives, in their much-needed attacks on federal overspending, too often give the Pentagon a pass. For the budget of fiscal 2011, taxpayers are spending $708 billion on defense.

Maybe it seems unpatriotic to criticize our military spending. Maybe it seems like you're not supporting the troops to look for defense cuts. But as a tribute to our soldiers, sailors and airmen this Memorial Day weekend, let's start dismantling the military-industrial complex that saps our wealth without helping our troops.

This week, conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., encouraged the president's fiscal responsibility commission to freeze defense spending and institute other reforms aimed at eventually cutting the military budget.

"Total Pentagon spending is higher today in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time during the last 60 years," Coburn wrote. More poignantly, he added: "America's defenses have been decaying, despite -- perhaps even because of--- increasing budgets."

More military spending might be yielding a weaker military. This may sound absurd, but it shouldn't -- not to conservative ears, at least.

Conservatives understand that big government is, very often, the problem. Bloated bureaucracies are counterproductive. You don't solve problems by throwing money at them. Government spending attracts waste, fraud and abuse. And when you put fallible humans in charge of spending huge amounts of other people's money, cronyism and corruption ensue.

Conservatives and libertarians don't oppose welfare because they resent helping poor people or resist foreign aid out of disregard for the world's poor. We want a smaller Health and Human Services budget in part because we think it will yield better health and leave humans better served.

These arguments also apply to defense spending.

We are spending more and getting less. Coburn writes: "As the defense budget has grown over time, our forces have shrunk. Secretary Gates noted in a recent speech that current submarines and amphibious ships are three times as expensive as their equivalents during the 1980s and we have fewer of them."

Part of the problem is the ballooning bureaucracy. "The Department of Defense," Coburn writes, "has far too many headquarters, staff, and bureaucracy that merely create more work for subordinate units."

Another part of the problem is the military-industrial complex. Conservatives now realize how the big banks gave us the bailouts, Big Pharma gave us health care "reform," and a gang of green bandits is angling to rip us off through a climate change boondoggle. Well, the defense contractors have been playing this game for decades.

Huge corporations, headquartered in Northern Virginia, depend mostly or entirely on the U.S. military for their profits. Bureaucrats and congressional staffers spend other people's money while protected from strict scrutiny by the veil of national security.

Defense contractors have spent more than half a billion dollars on lobbying since 2006. Former New York Sen. Al D'Amato represents United Technologies as does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's, D-Calif., former chief of staff. Linda Daschle, wife of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., lobbies for Boeing, General Electric and Lockheed Martin. Jim Dyer, former chief of staff for the House Appropriations Committee, claims Lockheed, GE and General Dynamics as clients.

To the staffers and politicians, these wealthy lobbyists serve as a walking reminder: If you play ball, you can get the sort of cushy job I have in a few years.

Politicians also use defense contracts as job programs -- as pork. This robs from taxpayers, but it also robs from our troops.

We need a military, and we're at war, so we can't completely avoid opportunities for corruption in defense. But we can minimize them. Coburn proposes some procurement reforms, but conservatives know that the best reform is often a pay cut. Republicans ought to call for some retrenchment at the Pentagon.

Timothy P. Carney is The Washington Examiner's Lobbying Editor. His K Street column appears on Wednesdays.









 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
military

The Reason the English Lost their Empire

The English.  One must wonder how they ever managed to nearly conquer the world with feckless wonders like those mentioned in the stories below.  Amazing.

I cannot find every story, and this one was sent, like several others, by a friend - who is just as confused as I am.




SAS defied MoD to rescue two of its men held hostage in Iraq as top commanders 'prepared to quit' over ban on mission


By Tim Shipman
Daily Mail
12:23 PM on 6th May 2010



The SAS launched a daring mission to rescue two of its own men held hostage in Iraq against the orders of the Ministry of Defence, the Daily Mail can reveal.

The elite unit was pushed to the brink of mutiny after it was banned from saving the SAS soldiers captured by militants because to do so would embarrass the Government.

The astonishing edict drove SAS officers close to mass resignation, according to a hardhitting report by the Tory MP Adam Holloway, a former Guards officer.

The SAS Lieutenant-Colonel on the ground, believing that ‘politically motivated’ commanders in the UK were ‘unable to make rational and effective decisions’, sent in a rescue team anyway – fearful that within hours the captured men could have been spirited away or executed.

The rescuers blasted their way into the police station in Basra where the two soldiers were being held and saved them.

Details of the incident in 2005 expose the shameful way the Armed Forces have become politicised under Labour – with political spin put before soldiers’ lives.

Mr Holloway’s explosive account is supported by General Sir Mike Jackson, who was head of the Army at the time but only learned of the scandal later.

General Jackson last night made clear his disgust at the way soldiers were asked to sacrifice their men for political reasons, shattering the sacred military covenant that no man is left behind on the battlefield.

He told the Mail: ‘The story as you relate it chimes with my memory of the events. It was not only a brave but a very necessary operation to release those two captured soldiers. The British Army looks after its own. Underline that three times.’

The two troopers were seized by militant Islamic militiamen who had infiltrated the Iraqi police.

But a ‘very senior general’ at Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, to the west of London, refused to approve the rescue mission.

Ministry of Defence officials were concerned that attacking an Iraqi police station would undermine the Government’s claims that Britain was successfully handing power to the local security services.

In a report on the Failure of British Military and Political Leadership in Basra, published by the First Defence think tank, Mr Holloway says: ‘The senior operational commanders in the MoD – a continent away from the frontline – repeated very clearly, and a number of times, that there were “more important things at stake than the lives of the soldiers”.’

Explaining the reasons for the decision, Mr Holloway quotes a senior British civilian official in Iraq at the time: ‘The need to rescue the soldiers from an insurgent group embedded within the police force proved that our training and mentoring operation was dangerously ineffective, and in complete contradiction to the universally positive picture presented to Whitehall by the Government and MoD at the time.’

That explanation was met with incredulity in the special forces. The report says SAS commanders regarded the orders as ‘politically-motivated deliberations’ that would only succeed in giving the insurgents time to ‘remove their captives beyond the reach of any rescue operation’.

The SAS Lt-Col ‘told his forward based troops to mount the operation with or without approval. In the event, approval did come through – but the operation was already being mounted by the time that it did’.

In a damning conclusion, Mr Holloway reveals: ‘The next day General Mike Jackson was told what had happened and was, reportedly, appalled. He also learned that had the authority not eventually come through the commanding officer and many of his officers and senior ranks would have resigned.’

Mr Holloway’s account makes no reference to the SAS but it was widely reported at the time that the two soldiers seized were part of the special forces regiment based in Hereford.

He reveals that the SAS Lt-Col later left the Army, ‘disillusioned at the degeneration of the moral backbone of British military generalship in the heart of Whitehall’. The MoD said it did not comment on special forces matters.


'There are more important things than the lives of soldiers' said the voice in London

By Tim Shipman

The SAS commander in Basra was planning one of the most risky and high-profile operations in the regiment’s recent history when he discovered that the enemy was not his biggest problem.

Hunkered in the nondescript HQ in Iraq’s second city, the Lieutenant-Colonel watched for the umpteenth time as footage of two of his men – held captive, beaten and bloodied – flashed on the TV screen in his office.

It was September 19, 2005, and in a jail in the centre of town two SAS men accused of killing an Iraqi policeman were held hostage by militants who had infiltrated the Iraqi police.

Three hundred miles north, on an airfield just outside Baghdad, a C-130 Hercules special forces transport plane sat on the runway, wind whipping the sand into a yellow mist.

In the back, a squadron of SAS troops sat patiently looking at the crate of kit strapped to the floor of the fuselage, pulses quickening as they checked their Heckler & Koch submachine guns and C8 carbine rifles.

A second SAS squadron in Basra prepared for the arrival of the reinforcements. Like any mission they had made speedy plans and moved into action with calm professionalism.

But this time it was personal. The targets were two of their own. That was when the call came – on a secure line from a military bunker just outside London. The Lt-Col could not believe what he was hearing. ‘Permission not granted. There are more important things than the lives of the soldiers.’

The voice was that of a senior general at Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, the UK nerve centre of the war.

That was when the Lt-Col realised that his biggest challenge would be the top brass at home. The men waiting on the runway were flabbergasted when they heard. ‘People were pretty fired up,’ one source close to the regiment said. ‘And then there was the let down. The CO was furious.’

It was then the commanding officer made the decision that could have seen him and his brother officers hauled over the coals. The alternative, they agreed, was to resign en masse in disgust.

He picked up the phone and made the fateful call. ‘We’re doing it anyway,’ he said. Minutes later the C-130 took off. There was no going back. BASRA was originally proclaimed a beacon for post-war Iraq, a model of how to hand over control to the local population.

But now it was a hotbed of militia extremism. For weeks the SAS had been monitoring and infiltrating the Iraqi insurgent groups who were quietly gaining a stranglehold on the very police force that British soldiers were supposed to be working with to restore order.

The operation had gathered intensity after six British soldiers were killed in attacks by militants. The crisis began when a group of special forces soldiers, clad in Arab garb and driving a battered civilian car, got into a shootout with Iraqi policemen at a roadblock in the city.

One Iraqi was killed and three injured in the gun battle. The SAS men were seized and beaten by their Iraqi captors. They were handed to a militant militia group. Then there was the public humiliation of the TV cameras.

The insurgents could not have chosen a better time to strike. The senior officer in Iraq was on leave, his deputy a staff officer without the clout to make the big calls. Brigade commander Brigadier John Lorimer – a soldier universally admired as an effective commander – had his hands tied by demands that he refer major command decisions to London.

In the drab corridors of the Ministry of Defence main building, there was panic, but not just about the lives of the men held hostage. Operational command rested with an RAF officer who was allegedly playing golf. His highly-regarded deputy, Major General Peter Wall, was out of the office.

The SAS commander’s request to launch a rescue mission was passed to Northwood. The judgment was that a raid would be both a diplomatic disaster in terms of relations with the Iraqis – but more seriously that launching the raid against Iraqi police who were supposed to be allies would be an admission that the British had lost control of Basra.

As Andy McNab, the SAS hero of the first Gulf War who is now a bestselling author, puts it: ‘There is a very strong feeling from the guys on the ground in Iraq and now in Afghanistan that we have made a mistake by running our wars from 3,000 miles away.’

In Basra, a delegation of officials and diplomats was dispatched to the police station where the men were being held, backed up by troops. They were quickly ambushed by a mob assembled by the militants who armed the crowd with petrol bombs. The scene descended into chaos.

Two Warrior fighting vehicles were swiftly engulfed in flames. One soldier, his uniform ablaze, was forced to throw himself from the hatch of his armoured car and roll on the ground to put out the flames. It became one of the defining images of the Iraq occupation. He was rescued by colleagues and there was a tactical retreat.

Then came rumours that the two hostages were going to be moved. SAS commanders feared their men would disappear and perhaps be executed. As darkness fell, ten armoured vehicles, packed with SAS colleagues, returned. They bulldozed through a 6ft wall to the compound.

The special forces troops fanned out, firing stun grenades while helicopters hovered overhead. They found the men and got them out. No British serviceman was seriously hurt. At some point after the SAS commander gave the green light for the raid, retrospective permission was granted by top brass back home.

But those who were there insist it was well under way before the agreement was given. One SAS source said: ‘The OK was given retrospectively because the operation was a success. But if it had gone wrong they would all have been completely shafted.’

There was a price. In the chaos 100 prisoners escaped and furious Iraqis quickly demanded compensation for the damage caused.

But insiders say the price of inaction for the reputation of the Army would have been higher. Just how serious became clear a day later when the head of the army, General Mike Jackson was told that the senior ranks of the SAS would have resigned if permission had not been granted.
















feckless fools

Let the Cuts Begin

The cuts begin.

We learned from this article that during the 1990's our combat strength was cut by nearly 40%.  Which makes perfect sense why Democrats in 2003 were screaming about the fact we could not wage two wars in two different places at the same time.  They were right.  They had allowed their party and their president to cut our combat strength by 40%.  They would know, they did it.





Gates says urgent need to cut defense bureaucracy


By ROBERT BURNS
AP
2:17 PM 05/08/10


ABILENE, Kan. -Warring against waste, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday he is ordering a top-to-bottom paring of the military bureaucracy in search of at least $10 billion in annual savings needed to prevent an erosion of U.S. combat power.

He took aim what he called a bloated bureaucracy, wasteful business practices and too many generals and admirals, and outlined an ambitious plan for reform that's almost certain to stir opposition in the corridors of Congress and Pentagon.

"The Defense Department must take a hard look at every aspect of how it is organized, staffed and operated — indeed, every aspect of how it does business," he said in a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in the former command in chief's home town. Gates was the keynote speaker at a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender in World War II.

The library was a fitting setting for Gates to caution against unrestrained military spending. In his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office in January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the "grave implications" of having built during that war an enormous military establishment and a huge arms industry that could wield undue influence in American society.



"Eisenhower was wary of seeing his beloved republic turn into a muscle-bound, garrison state — militarily strong but economically stagnant and strategically insolvent," Gates said. He recalled Eisenhower's impatience with a mindset within the military that often sought to add new weaponry without regard for cost or efficiency — "pile program on program," as he once put it.

Gates said he had recently come to the conclusion about the urgent need for big cuts in light of the recession and the likelihood that Congress no longer will give the Pentagon the sizable budget increases it has enjoyed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time," he said.

In earlier remarks to reporters, Gates said it was clear that defense budgets will be tight "for as far into the future as anyone can see."

The current defense budget, not counting the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is $535 billion; the administration is asking for $549 billion for 2011.

Gates used tough talk to stress that he will personally oversee the effort to reshape the Pentagon bureaucracy, and that he won't be denied.

"We're not going to just roll over to preserve programs that we think we don't need — regardless of where the pressure is coming from," he told reporters Friday.

Pressed to say whether he would remain as defense secretary next year to wage the budget battle with Congress, he replied, "We'll get this done." Gates has told Obama he will remain at the Pentagon through 2010, but his future beyond that is unclear.

Gates said it highly unlikely that the Pentagon will get Congress to approve budgets in the coming years that grow enough to sustain the current size of the military. That's why he is looking for roughly $10 billion in savings from trimming the bureaucracy and applying that money to sustaining the combat force and investing in its modernization. He said the savings must be repeated in additional years.

"Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do," he said. "These savings must stem from root-and-branch changes that can be sustained and added to over time."

Gates noted that for the past two years he has focused his budget cuts on major weapons programs that he believed were unnecessary or unaffordable. He managed to get Congress to agree last year, for example, to stop production of the Air Force's F-22 stealth fighter earlier than previously planned, and he halted an Army ground combat vehicle project that had been a top Army priority.

"More is needed — much more," he said.

That means cutting what he called "overhead" — the bureaucratic machinery that he said chews up about 40 percent of the Pentagon's budget.

In this category he included the hierarchy of flag officers — the generals and admirals who run the military services.

To illustrate his point that there are too many of these top officers, Gates said that while the overall troop strength of the Army was sliced by nearly 40 percent during the 1990s, the reduction in generals and admirals across the military was about half that. He suggested that this was a top-heavy structure that is making it harder to get proper resources to the war fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Consider that a request for a dog-handling team in Afghanistan — or for any other unit — has to go through no fewer than five four-star headquarters in order to be processed, validated and eventually dealt with," he said.

It is widely known, but also widely accepted, in the military that the bureaucracy is bloated.

Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen, the commanding general of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., said Friday that it is obvious there are going to be more intense pressure to save money and that the bureaucracy is going to be a prime target.

"There's tons of bureaucracy," Caslen said in an interview with reporters traveling with Gates, who visited Leavenworth Friday.

In his Abilene speech, Gates also took on the Pentagon's approach to setting what it calls "requirements," or the numbers, types and capabilities of weapons it says it needs to accomplish its mission. He suggested that the military has overstated its requirements in a post-Cold War world.

"Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?" he asked.




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
military

Separation of Church and State

God is not religious.

Do these people troll through every obscure insignia, label, motto, name, door marker in every state, every military base looking for such things?





Group: Army symbol is religious, should be changed




By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer
April 29, 2010



.DENVER – A religious watchdog group says a cross and motto on the emblem of an Army hospital in Colorado violate the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state and should be removed.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation asked the Army this week to change the emblem of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs.

The emblem says "Pro deo et humanitate" or "For God and humanity."

Fort Carson commanders will review the complaint, Lt. Col. Steve Wollman said.

He said the emblem had been approved by the Army Institute of Heraldry and has been in use since 1969.

Wollman said references to doctors serving God and humanity date to the time of Hippocrates, a pre-Christianity Greek physician.

Wollman said the cross, which has a pointed base, is both an emblem of mercy and a symbol dating to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims carried a cross with a spiked base to mark the site of a camp.

Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said that's a reference to the Crusades and could embolden U.S. enemies who want to portray the war on terror as a Christian war on Islam.

"This continues to add more fodder to the argument that we are Crusaders," Weinstein said. "It's exactly what fundamentalist Muslims want."

Weinstein's foundation, based in Albuquerque, N.M., last week persuaded the Army to withdraw an invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at the Pentagon on May 6, the National Day of Prayer.

Weinstein cited comments Graham made in 2001 describing Islam as evil. The Army said it withdrew the invitation because Graham's remarks were "not appropriate."

Graham is the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham.

Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., asked the House Armed Services Committee this week to hold hearings on what he called "a growing movement in the military to censor certain biblical teachings."

Weinstein said he lodged the complaint about the cross on behalf of 43 people at Fort Carson. He said 29 of them are Protestants or Catholics. One is a civilian and the others are enlisted personnel or junior officers.

He said they took their concerns to him for fear of reprisals if they complained to military commanders. Weinstein said none wanted to be identified.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
god

The Tragedy of Walter Reed and the Failure of Bush

It was quite evident in the days following the revelations of treatment at Walter Reed, that the left would use this as a stick to beat Bush with - his failing to live up to standards he defined for himself as a war president.  The left still use this stick - in an email I posted some time ago titled Now You Get Mad.  One point in that long list of whining is Walter Reed, Bush fault.

And when it was discovered, people were fired, removed, and new people put into place.  It could be argued that it had nothing to do with Bush (and properly it didn't), but he was the Commander-in-Chief and ...  just like Obama is now.



In Army’s Trauma Care Units, Feeling Warehoused



By JAMES DAO and DAN FROSCH
April 24, 2010
The New York Times




COLORADO SPRINGS — A year ago, Specialist Michael Crawford wanted nothing more than to get into Fort Carson’s Warrior Transition Battalion, a special unit created to provide closely managed care for soldiers with physical wounds and severe psychological trauma.

James Agee, who served two tours in Iraq, said officers in the Fort Carson transition unit verbally abused medicated soldiers. “They would say, ‘These guys can’t do this because they are crazy.’ ”

A strapping Army sniper who once brimmed with confidence, he had returned emotionally broken from Iraq, where he suffered two concussions from roadside bombs and watched several platoon mates burn to death. The transition unit at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs, seemed the surest way to keep suicidal thoughts at bay, his mother thought.

It did not work. He was prescribed a laundry list of medications for anxiety, nightmares, depression and headaches that made him feel listless and disoriented. His once-a-week session with a nurse case manager seemed grossly inadequate to him. And noncommissioned officers — soldiers supervising the unit — harangued or disciplined him when he arrived late to formation or violated rules.

Last August, Specialist Crawford attempted suicide with a bottle of whiskey and an overdose of painkillers. By the end of last year, he was begging to get out of the unit.

“It is just a dark place,” said the soldier, who is waiting to be medically discharged from the Army. “Being in the W.T.U. is worse than being in Iraq.”

Created in the wake of the scandal in 2007 over serious shortcomings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Warrior Transition Units were intended to be sheltering way stations where injured soldiers could recuperate and return to duty or gently process out of the Army. There are currently about 7,200 soldiers at 32 transition units across the Army, with about 465 soldiers at Fort Carson’s unit.

But interviews with more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals from Fort Carson’s transition unit, along with reports from other posts, suggest that the units are far from being restful sanctuaries. For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers. Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.

Some soldiers in the unit, and their families, described long hours alone in their rooms, or in homes off the base, aimlessly drinking or playing video games.

“In combat, you rely on people and you come out of it feeling good about everything,” said a specialist in the unit. “Here, you’re just floating. You’re not doing much. You feel worthless.”

At Fort Carson, many soldiers complained that doctors prescribed drugs too readily. As a result, some soldiers have become addicted to their medications or have turned to heroin. Medications are so abundant that some soldiers in the unit openly deal, buy or swap prescription pills.

Heavy use of psychotropic drugs and narcotics makes it difficult to exercise, wake for morning formation and attend classes, soldiers and health care professionals said. Yet noncommissioned officers discipline soldiers who fail to complete those tasks, sometimes over the objections of nurse case managers and doctors.

At least four soldiers in the Fort Carson unit have committed suicide since 2007, the most of any transition unit as of February, according to the Army.

Senior officers in the Army’s Warrior Transition Command declined to discuss specific soldiers. But they said Army surveys showed that most soldiers treated in transition units since 2007, more than 50,000 people, had liked the care.

Those senior officers acknowledged that addiction to medications was a problem, but denied that Army doctors relied too heavily on drugs. And they strongly defended disciplining wounded soldiers when they violated rules. Punishment is meted out judiciously, they said, mainly to ensure that soldiers stick to treatment plans and stay safe.

“These guys are still soldiers, and we want to treat them like soldiers,” said Lt. Col. Andrew L. Grantham, commander of the Warrior Transition Battalion at Fort Carson.

The colonel offered another explanation for complaints about the unit. Many soldiers, he said, struggle in transition units because they would rather be with regular, deployable units. In some cases, he said, they feel ashamed of needing treatment.

“Some come to us with an identity crisis,” he said. “They don’t want to be seen as part of the W.T.U. But we want them to identify with a purpose and give them a mission.”

Drugs and Addiction

Sgt. John Conant, a 15-year veteran of the Army, returned from his second tour of Iraq in 2007 a changed man, according to his wife, Delphina. Angry and sullen, he reported to the transition unit at Fort Carson, where he was prescribed at least six medications a day for sleeping disorders, pain and anxiety, keeping a detailed checklist in his pocket to remind him of his dosages.

The medications disoriented him, Mrs. Conant said, and he would often wander the house late at night before curling up on the floor and falling asleep. Then in April 2008, after taking morphine and Ambien, the sleeping pill, he died in his sleep. A coroner ruled that his death was from natural causes. He was 36.

Mrs. Conant said she felt her husband never received meaningful therapy at the transition unit, where he had become increasingly frustrated and was knocked down a rank, to specialist, because of discipline problems.

“They didn’t want to do anything but give him medication,” she said.

Other soldiers and health care workers at Fort Carson offered similar complaints. They said that most transition unit soldiers were given complex cocktails of medications that raised concerns about accidental overdoses, addiction and side effects from interactions.

“These kids change their medication like they change their underwear,” said a psychotherapist who works with Fort Carson soldiers and asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the transition unit. “They can’t even remember which pills they’re taking.”

Some turned to heroin, which is readily available in the barracks, after becoming addicted to their pain pills, according to interviews with soldiers and health care professionals at Fort Carson.

“We’re all on sleep meds, anxiety meds, pain meds,” said Pfc. Jeffery Meier, who is in the transition unit and said he knew a dozen soldiers in the unit, including a recent roommate, who had used heroin. “The heroin is all that, wrapped into one.”

Fort Carson officials said that addiction to prescription drugs was no more prevalent in the Army than in the civilian world, and that medication was just one element of a balanced treatment that includes therapy.

But they acknowledged that they had found heroin abuse in the transition unit and said they were trying to reduce the use of opiates and synthetic opiates to prevent addiction, not always with success.

“There is active resistance, because they are addicted,” said Lt. Col. Joel Tanaka, the Warrior Transition Battalion surgeon at Fort Carson. “We’ve learned if we don’t assist them and wrap our arms around them, then they go off post and get these drugs illegally.”

Jess Seiwert offers a cautionary tale. A staff sergeant and sniper who was knocked unconscious by roadside bombs in Iraq, he returned to Fort Carson in late 2006 with post-traumatic stress disorder, burns and a variety of aches. Prone to bouts of rage, he often drank himself to sleep and began abusing the painkiller Percocet.

Medical records show that Sergeant Seiwert’s captain thought he was a danger to his wife and needed inpatient psychiatric care. Instead, the sergeant was transferred into Fort Carson’s transition unit in 2008.

In a recent interview, Mr. Seiwert, now discharged from the Army, said he received minimal therapy in the unit but was given ample medication, including the painkillers he abused. “I should have been in inpatient rehab to get me off the drugs,” he said.

Last summer, just months after being medically discharged, he badly beat his wife while bingeing on alcohol and Percocet. He pleaded guilty to a second-degree assault charge and is likely to face five years in prison.

‘Making Things Worse’

Like private outpatient clinics, Warrior Transition Units aim to provide highly individualized care and ready access to case managers, therapists and doctors. But the care is organized in a distinctly Army way: noncommissioned officers, known as the cadre, maintain discipline and enforce rules, often using traditional drill-sergeant toughness with junior enlisted soldiers.

At the top of the command are traditional Army officers, not health care professionals: Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, head of the Warrior Transition Command, was an artillery officer, and Colonel Grantham an intelligence officer.

Beneath them is what the Army calls its triad of care. Members of the cadre keep a close eye on individual soldiers, much like squad leaders in regular line units. Nurse case managers schedule appointments and assist with medications and therapy. And primary care managers — doctors, physicians’ assistants or nurse practitioners — oversee care and prescribe medicines.

The structure is intended to ensure that every soldier gets careful supervision and that Army values and discipline are maintained. But many soldiers at Fort Carson complained that discipline and insensitive treatment by cadre members made wounded soldiers feel as if they were viewed as fakers or weaklings.

James Agee, a former staff sergeant who transferred into the transition unit after returning from his second tour of Iraq in 2008, said he frequently heard cadre members verbally abuse medicated soldiers who were struggling to get out of bed for morning formation or stay awake for all-night duty.

“They would say, ‘These guys can’t do this because they are crazy,’ ” said Mr. Agee, who received a medical discharge from the Army. “It would make you feel like you were inferior.”

One Army specialist in the unit, who received diagnoses of post-traumatic stress syndrome and traumatic brain injury, said he was ordered to perform 24-hour guard duty repeatedly against the orders of his doctor. The specialist, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared repercussions, said he experienced flashbacks to Iraq during the long hours by himself.

In many cases, the noncommissioned officers have made it clear that they do not believe the psychological symptoms reported by the unit’s soldiers are real or particularly serious. At Fort Hood, Tex., a study conducted just before the shooting rampage there last November — which found that many soldiers in the Warrior Transition Unit thought their treatment relied too heavily on medication — also concluded that a majority of the cadre believed that soldiers were faking post-traumatic stress or exaggerating their symptoms.

Christina Perez, the wife of a transition unit soldier from Fort Carson, said she got into an ugly fight with a member of the cadre who was furious that she had gone over his head to request additional therapy for her husband, a sergeant first class who had sustained a brain injury during one of two tours in Iraq as a tank gunner.

In a meeting, the noncommissioned officer shouted that Ms. Perez’s husband did not deserve his uniform and that he should give it to her instead, Ms. Perez said in a police complaint. No charges were brought.

Eventually her husband, who has headaches and memory loss, was transferred to an inpatient psychiatric clinic in Denver while he awaits a medical discharge. “All they do is make things worse,” Ms. Perez said of the transition unit.

Last year, The Associated Press reported that the transition unit at Fort Bragg in North Carolina had a discipline rate three times as high as the 82nd Airborne Division, the base’s primary occupant.

General Cheek said the Army’s own survey of other major posts showed that discipline rates in transition units were about the same as in regular units.

He asserted that most cadre members, who receive extra pay and training for the job, do their jobs well, working long hours and spending weekends checking on soldiers. Discipline, he said, is a form of tough love.

“If we are going to maintain safe discipline, all rules must apply,” the general said. “We do have an expectation that our soldiers want to get better.”

Bureaucratic Delays

Sgt. Keith Nowicki was an intelligence analyst who was sent back early from his second deployment to Iraq in April 2008 because of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, said his wife, Ashley. Assigned to the Fort Carson transition unit, he spent nearly a year waiting for his medical discharge.

Instead of getting the help he hoped for, he spent much of the time in the unit alone, growing increasingly angry, drinking heavily and abusing Percocet. In early 2009, he separated from his wife. While on the phone with her in March 2009 he shot himself to death. He was due to be discharged at the end of the month.

Though Ms. Nowicki does not attribute her husband’s suicide to the long wait for his discharge, she said the slowness of the process and the lack of support from the transition unit added to his sense of hopelessness.

“It was just a bunch of red tape,” Ms. Nowicki said. “He would spend days trying to track down his own medical records.”

Army officials acknowledged that wait times for medical discharges at Fort Carson had grown. A major reason is that Fort Carson is part of a pilot program with the Department of Veterans Affairs in which the Army and the V.A. collaborate in evaluating soldiers’ injuries. The collaboration between the two bureaucracies is expected to speed up veterans benefits once a soldier leaves the Army, but it can lengthen the initial evaluation period, officials said.

Michael Crawford has been waiting more than a year for his medical discharge. As his anxiety and depression have worsened, so have his problems in the unit. His rank was recently reduced to private in punishment for overstaying leave and using marijuana.

But things are looking up, his mother believes: he will be able to stay with her in Michigan while awaiting his discharge. His mother, Sally Darrow, has already seen one son commit suicide. She believes that Michael would become the second if he had to return to Fort Carson and the transition unit.

“At home, with family and schoolmates, he’s dealing with things better,” Ms. Darrow said. “He’s not safe there.”





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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