History > 2006 > USA > Pentagon (IV)

Army officials are confident that recruiters, with new incentives,

can increase the number of enlistees, like these at Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn.

Marko Georgiev for The New York Times

 With Bigger Army, a Bigger Task for Recruiters        NYT        24.12.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/us/24recruit.html

Pentagon to Request

Billions More in War Money

December 30, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 — The Pentagon is seeking nearly $100 billion for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a request that, if approved by Congress, would set an annual record for war-related spending.

The $99.7 billion request, detailed in a 17-page internal Defense Department memorandum dated Dec. 7, would be in addition to $70 billion appropriated in September. The request would push the total for the 2007 fiscal year to nearly $170 billion, 45 percent more than Congress provided for 2006.

The request is likely to receive more scrutiny from Congress next year than previous supplemental spending bills, in part because Democrats now control both the House and Senate. Another reason for the scrutiny is that Pentagon officials encouraged the services to ask for “costs related to the longer war against terror,” not just continuing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a memorandum that became public earlier this year.

About $50 billion — most of the money — would go to the Army, which is conducting the bulk of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request also includes $3.8 billion for the Air Force and $3 billion for the Navy to buy or upgrade aircraft. Both services have argued in recent months that they need to replace planes used in combat operations.

But some experts questioned whether the services were exploiting the must-pass nature of the supplemental bill to seek money for other purposes like the modernization of aircraft rather than just wartime replacements. Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy analysis organization in Virginia, pointed to the Air Force request for $62 million for ballistic missiles, a weapon not being employed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Mr. Thompson said the request, which is not described further in the memorandum, may be part of a continuing Air Force project to arm ballistic missiles with conventional warheads to be able to strike terrorist targets quickly if other weapons cannot be used.

Even so, he added, “there are a number of weapons systems in the supplemental request not normally associated with fighting terrorists but which the services say still should be covered as part of the global effort.”

Altogether, the four military services would receive $26.6 billion for “reconstitution,” a term that the memorandum said covered repair and replacement of equipment damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Along with the $50 billion already provided this year, that is more than double what Congress appropriated in 2006.

“There is a real question about how much of this is really related to the war,” said Steve Kosiak, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington policy analysis group.

The Pentagon is also seeking $9.7 billion for training Iraqi and Afghan security forces, almost as much as has been spent in total since 2001, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service. In a reflection of the worsening security situation in Afghanistan, more than half of the requested money would go to training the country’s army and police forces.

The request also underscores the continuing strain that deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are putting on ground forces. The request includes $3.7 billion to speed up its outfitting and training of two Army combat brigades and three Marine battalions.

Since 2001, Congress has approved $507 billion for Afghanistan, Iraq and other operations deemed part of combating terrorism. Even with the Democrats in control, there is unlikely to be much appetite for cutting the war-related spending requests, Mr. Kosiak said.

“No one seems to be saying we’re going to make deep cuts in war-related expenditures,” he said. “I don’t see evidence that the Democrats are interested in cutting this.”

But the incoming Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees have said they will push the Bush administration to finance war costs in regular appropriations bills, not in supplemental spending measures, to make the costs clearer.

The request also includes $10 billion for protective equipment for troops and $2.5 billion for technology to defeat improvised bombs, the leading cause of American combat casualties in Iraq.

    Pentagon to Request Billions More in War Money, NYT, 30.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/washington/30budget.html

Mark

Heady Days for Makers of Weapons

December 26, 2006
The New York Times
By LESLIE WAYNE

THESE are very good times for military contractors. Profits are up, their stocks are rising and Pentagon spending is reaching record levels.

The only cloud might seem to be what the Democratic takeover of Congress could mean for their business. After all, this is an industry that has generally supported the Republican Party by sending about 60 percent of its political contributions to Republican candidates.

But, even so, few in the military industry are worried. Next year’s Pentagon budget is expected to exceed $560 billion, including spending for Iraq. And, sometime this spring, President Bush has indicated he will seek an additional $100 billion in supplemental spending in 2007 for Iraq and Afghanistan.

And no one expects Democrats, in the last two years of the Bush administration, to make major changes, especially with the war continuing. Democrats are sensitive to the charge of being “soft” on defense, and are expected to use their control of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees to establish their military bona fides for the 2008 presidential election. This would include Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is an increasingly vocal member of the committee.

“I wouldn’t look for Democrats to make cuts in the defense budget,” said Michael O’Hanlan, a military expert at the Brookings Institution. “You didn’t hear a lot about the defense budget in the last campaign and the Democrats know that you don’t mess with the top line.”

Still, the industry can expect some harsh scrutiny. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has lead the efforts to tighten oversight of military contractors and programs, moves up to become the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

He promises to keep up his relentless criticism of how the Pentagon spends its billions — he has already written the incoming secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, to lay out some of his complaints.

On the House side, the incoming Democratic chairman, Ike Skelton of Missouri, has said he wants to resurrect the committee’s investigations and oversight subcommittee, which the Republicans disbanded in 1995. And he wants to hold hearings on missile defense and other space-based weapons systems that many Democrats have questioned.

While Democrats and Senator McCain may cause individual companies some pain through attacks on specific programs and weapons systems, the billions that have been supporting the industry are expected to continue unabated, and perhaps even increase.

“I think the Democrats will be on good behavior as long as the war continues and we have 150,000 troops in Iraq,” said Paul Nisbet, an analyst with JSA Securities in Newport, R.I.

Evidence of the industry’s good fortune is reflected in the stocks of major contractors over the last year. At the end of 2005, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, the largest contractor, was trading around $62 a share. Now Lockheed is around $92 a share. Over the last year, Boeing, which holds the No. 2 position, saw its shares rise from about $66 a share to around almost $89 a share. Meanwhile, Raytheon stock has risen from around $39 a share to more than $53 a share in the last year and General Dynamics has gone from the high $50s a share to almost $74 a share over the same period.

“We certainly don’t foresee any change,” said Thomas Jurkowsky, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin. “You certainly cannot deny that there is a lot of uncertainty in the world — North Korea, Iran, Iraq. The Democratic Congress will see the reality of the dangerous world we live in, and will make decisions accordingly.”

Democrats are typically loath to cut programs that could affect unionized workers. The fact that so many of the Pentagon’s weapons are build by unionized work forces — the backbone of the Democratic Party — is another reason why Democrats are expected to keep the money flowing.

“The unionized workers in defense plants are a natural constituency of the Democrats,” said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. “There is not too much advantage for Democrats to attack weapons programs.”

Still, some programs are not expected to fare well. Among those considered vulnerable are large Air Force programs that are not directly related to the war in Iraq — satellites, missile defense and tactical fighters, for example.

Already, the incoming Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, Carl Levin, has said it is a mistake to purchase more missiles until tests can determine whether the missile defense program works.

Also worrisome to the industry is that the incoming Democrats — specifically, Mr. Levin — have indicated that they are supportive of efforts to more closely scrutinize contractors on the issues of mismanagement and cost overruns. In a postelection news conference, Mr. Levin expressed support for Mr. McCain’s efforts and even listed industry oversight as one of his top priorities.

“We need to put much more emphasis on the oversight process, to make sure that the American people are getting a proper return on their tax dollars and that Pentagon activities are lawful and transparent,” Mr. Levin said.

This comes as some of the most important and costly weapon systems the Pentagon is acquiring have fallen years behind in development and billions over budget — grist for Congressional scrutiny, especially from Mr. McCain.

In fact, Mr. McCain, even before stepping up to the No. 2 position on the committee, began to make his presence felt. Just this month, the Air Force, under pressure from Mr. McCain, announced it was rewriting some of the rules for a contest between Airbus and Boeing for a contract potentially valued at $200 billion to build a new fleet of aerial tankers, which allow military planes to be refueled in midair.

Mr. McCain’s past scrutiny of this contract led to the jailing of two top Boeing executives and the early retirement of an Air Force secretary.

Mr. McCain wrote Mr. Gates, the incoming defense secretary, to complain about a lack of open competition in the tanker bidding process, which led to rewriting of the bidding rules. The tanker program would be a record order of commercial jets — the Air Force plans to buy some 530 commercial jets over the next three decades and adapt them for use as flying gas stations.

Mr. McCain would have wielded even greater influence had he become chairman of the full Senate Armed Services Committee.

“These contractors clearly are relieved,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit that has been critical of Pentagon practices. “These reforms won’t be the No. 1 priority for the committee, but it will be an important priority.”

    Heady Days for Makers of Weapons, NYT, 26.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/business/26place.html

With Bigger Army, a Bigger Task for Recruiters

December 24, 2006
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE and THOM SHANKER

In his six years as an Army recruiter in South Dakota and now in Chicago, Sgt. First Class Roger White has heard his pitch rejected for all kinds of reasons: The job is too dangerous. My parents hate the war. I can make more money working.

But when Sergeant White tried to explain why he trusted that the military could continue to sustain and swell its ranks at a time of war, he said, one story came to mind.

A 39-year-old woman who once worked as a chemical specialist in the Army found herself down and out and living in a women’s shelter, he said. The Army came calling one more time, and she re-enlisted. Now, the woman is back in uniform at her previous job, serving in South Korea.

“It was amazing,” Sergeant White said, “to see how much change we could bring to just this one woman’s life.”

More recruits may soon be needed. With President Bush’s declaration last week that he had asked Robert M. Gates, the new defense secretary, to work with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a plan to expand the Army and Marine Corps, military officials have already begun to consider how to grow, by how much and how fast.

Senior Army officials underscore the challenges they face, regardless of the goals that might be set. But like Sergeant White, they also express confidence that the Army’s recruiters — armed with incentives, high-tech marketing and inspiring stories from soldiers — can continue a steady, substantial annual increase in troop numbers.

The process is expected to be gradual: Pentagon civilian officials and military officers said that few were envisioning a large, rapid growth that would require the Army to dust off emergency mobilization plans for reopening bases or drawing in National Guard equipment.

Instead, civilian and military officials said, they are drawing up tentative proposals that would make permanent the 30,000-troop temporary increase approved by Congress after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and then add 30,000 more troops to the Army over the next five years, resulting in an active-duty Army with 542,400 soldiers by 2012.

Expanding the nation’s ground forces is expensive; every 10,000 new soldiers add about $1.2 billion in personnel costs to the Pentagon’s annual budget. On top of that, equipment for 10,000 new troops would cost an additional $2 billion, according to Army statistics.

The study of how to expand the ground forces comes at a time of other financial strains. Army officials have told Congress that the service was $56 billion short in its equipment budget before the war in Iraq, and now requires an extra $14 billion annually just to repair and replace equipment worn or destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, among many officers and soldiers in Iraq and at home, the need for additional support has grown urgent. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, previewed the service’s thinking this month when he warned that unless more soldiers were added to the roster, “We will break the active component.”

General Schoomaker said the Army could successfully manage a growth of 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers a year, and a range of Army officials acknowledged that any growth larger or faster than that would require exorbitant amounts of money for financial incentives, new barracks and equipment.

Similarly, Gen. James T. Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said recently that his force of 180,000 could grow by 1,000 to 2,000 a year until the current strain on America’s ground forces from the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan was reduced.

Col. Kevin A. Shwedo, director of operations for the Army Accessions Command, which is responsible for recruiting and initial training, said the service routinely reassigned drill sergeants and opened classrooms to fill specific Army needs, whether into field medicine, intelligence or infantry. This experience would allow the Army to deal with any order to expand its roster, he said.

“We have a plan right now where we have projected training seats from now through the end of next year,” Colonel Shwedo said in a telephone interview. “And we have the ability with minimal disruption to shift those seats if a decision is made by our military and civilian leadership to expand the training base.”

Recruiters still face challenges in filling basic training classrooms with new soldiers. The Army failed to meet its annual recruiting goals in 2005 by the widest margin in two decades.

The Army met its recruiting goal in the 2006 year, which ended at midnight on Sept. 30. But to be successful, the Army added 1,000 recruiters, bringing its total to 6,500, and sweetened their educational and financial incentives.

The Army also raised recruits’ maximum allowable age to 42 from 35 and accepted a larger percentage of applicants who scored at the lowest acceptable range on a standardized aptitude examination, leading some military analysts to suggest that the Army had undermined its historic emphasis on quality to make its quota.

Sgt. First Class Abid Shah, a senior enlisted official at the military entrance processing station at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, where new recruits are tested and sworn in, said more recruiters might be needed. Even then, he emphasized that the effort would move slowly.

“It won’t happen in days,” Sergeant Shah said. “It takes years.”

Part of the struggle, recruiters said, is economic. Attracting young people to military service is difficult when jobs are plentiful and wages are on the rise.

The pool of eligible candidates is also small, as Army requirements that recruits meet certain physical, mental and moral standards mean that only 3 of 10 18-year-old Americans may apply.

Parents are another major obstacle to recruitment, Pentagon studies have shown. For some recruits, signing up means risking alienating parents, or just plain ignoring them.

Luis Vega, for example, after being sworn in to the Army Reserve on Friday at Fort Hamilton, said he had not told his parents.

“They think it’s just a phase,” he said.

His head was already shaved; he planned to ship out in April. And besides his fiancée, who he said supported the move, Mr. Vega, 28, said he was the only one in his hometown of East Rutherford, N.J., who seemed to understand the value of military service.

“Everybody thinks I’m crazy,” Mr. Vega said.

Elsewhere, especially in the Southwest, where recruiting has been strong in recent years, the mood seemed to be more visibly upbeat.

At a recruiting station near the University of Texas at Austin, Sgt. First Class Jeremy Cousineau said that there seemed to be no lack of interest among young men and women in his area. He said he believed that the Army would have little trouble finding the soldiers it needed.

“It’s all good around here,” he said. “Life is good in recruiting for us.”

Two marines helping out with recruiting while at home for the holidays in Tempe, Ariz., said they hoped that their positive experiences in the military would persuade others to sign up.

One of them, Sgt. Jesus Delatrinidad, 23, said that despite the long absences from home — unlike many marines, he has not served in Iraq — signing up or re-enlisting brought benefits far beyond the financial.

“I love the Marine Corps and that’s what’s making me think about staying in,” he said, noting that he had six more months on his four-year contract. “It’s made me a better person.”

Appeals to the sense of personal growth, and patriotism remain a dominant part of the recruiting pitch for the Army and the Marines. In advertisements and at sporting events, recruiters now emphasize intangibles, like the camaraderie of combat, at least as much as the financial incentives like extra money for college.

According to Sergeant White in Chicago, the approach seems to be working.

“The applicants we’ve been interviewing, people join for a reason,” he said. “Whether that’s to serve the country, to pay off college or go to college in the first place, that hasn’t changed. But more and more, we’re seeing the patriotism. People who simply want to serve their country. That’s their reason for coming into the office, and that hasn’t changed.”

John Dougherty contributed reporting from Tempe, Ariz., Tim Eaton from Austin, Tex., and Eric Ferkenhoff from Chicago.

    With Bigger Army, a Bigger Task for Recruiters, NYT, 24.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/us/24recruit.html

Editorial

A Real-World Army

December 24, 2006
The New York Times

Military reality finally broke through the Bush administration’s ideological wall last week, with President Bush publicly acknowledging the need to increase the size of the overstretched Army and Marine Corps.

Larger ground forces are an absolute necessity for the sort of battles America is likely to fight during the coming decades: extended clashes with ground-based insurgents rather than high-tech shootouts with rival superpowers. The president’s belated recognition is welcome, though it comes only after significant damage has been done to the Army’s morale, recruitment standards and fighting readiness. Given the time required to recruit and train the additional troops, the proposed increase will not make much difference in Iraq’s current battles. But over time it will help make America more secure and better prepared to meet future crises.

The need for more troops has for some time been obvious to Americans. They have heard from neighbors or from news reports of tours of duty involuntarily extended, second and even third deployments to Iraq, lowered recruiting standards and members of the National Guard and Reserves vowing to get out. That is the inevitable consequence of trying to squeeze out an additional 160,000 soldiers for Iraq and Afghanistan year after year without significantly increasing overall ground forces.

But it took the departure of Donald Rumsfeld — the author of the failed Iraq policy and the doctrine of going to war with less than the Army we needed — for Mr. Bush finally to accept this reality.

There is no permanent right number for the size of American ground forces. The current size — just over 500,000 for the active duty Army and 180,000 for the Marine Corps — is based on military assessments at the end of the cold war. As the world changes, those assessments must be constantly reviewed. When the 21st century began, Pentagon planners expected that American forces could essentially coast unchallenged for a few decades, relying on superior air and sea power, while preparing for possible future military competition with an increasingly powerful China. That meant investing in the Air Force and Navy, not the Army and Marines.

Then 9/11 changed everything, except the Pentagon mind-set. During the Rumsfeld years, reality was subordinated to a dogma of “transformation,” which declared that with a little more technology, the Army could do a lot more fighting with fewer soldiers than its senior generals believed necessary.

Every year since 2001 has brought increased demands on America’s slimmed-down and dollar-starved ground forces, while billions continued to flow into sustaining the oversized and underused Air Force and Navy, and modernizing their state-of-the-art equipment. As a result, the overall Pentagon budget is larger than it needs to be, while the part going to overtaxed ground forces is too small.

Increasing those ground forces will cost roughly $1.5 billion a year for every 10,000 troops added, as well as tens of billions in one-time recruitment and equipment expenses. But America can afford it and it can be done without any significant increase in the annual military budget.

For example, the estimated $15 billion a year (plus start-up costs) needed to add 100,000 more ground troops could easily be found by slashing military pork and spending on unneeded stealth fighters, stealth destroyers and attack submarines, and by trimming the active duty Air Force and Navy to better reflect current battlefield requirements.

Over time, bigger ground forces will mean more sustainable troop rotations, fewer overseas deployments of the National Guard and better battlefield ratios of American to enemy fighters. That is the least America owes to the men and women who risk their lives to keep us all more secure.

    A Real-World Army, NYT, 24.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/opinion/25sun1.html

Flurry of Calls About Draft, and a Day of Denials

December 23, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 — As the de facto media contact for the Selective Service System, Dick Flahavan is the Maytag repairman of government press people. With the military draft out of business since 1973, the Selective Service just doesn’t get a lot of calls these days.

But by midday Friday, Mr. Flahavan’s office had fielded dozens of inquiries, not just from reporters but from some anxious parents as well, all with some variation of the same urgent question: Are you reinstituting the draft?

So adamant was the denial that Mr. Flahavan, a bit beleaguered, had his staff members post an unplanned update Friday morning at the top of Selective Service’s Web site: “No Draft on Horizon!”

What prompted all this was a Hearst wire service article noting that the Selective Service was making plans for a “mock” draft exercise that would use computerized models to determine how, if necessary, the government would get some 100,000 young adults to report to their local draft boards.

The mock computer exercise, last carried out in 1998, is strictly routine, Selective Service officials said, and it will not actually be run until 2009 — if at all. The exercise has been scheduled several times in the last few years, only to be scuttled each time because of budget and staffing problems, and Mr. Flahavan said he would not be surprised if it was canceled this time around, too.

No matter. With President Bush saying that he wants to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps, the military strained near the breaking point and the secretary of veterans affairs suggesting publicly this week that a reconstituted draft could “benefit” the country, even the notion of a mock exercise seemed to strike a nerve.

Since the start of the war in Iraq, some Democrats and Internet bloggers have been stirring up talk of a “secret plan” by the Bush administration to resume the draft, and the mere mention of the idea summons Vietnam-era images of birthday-generated draft lotteries and draft evaders fleeing to Canada.

Mr. Flahavan, an associate director of the Selective Service who has worked there for nearly two decades, has seen fears of a draft enflamed before — most notably at the start of the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and the start of the Iraq war in 2003, as anxious parents would call to ask what effect their son’s heart murmur would have on his draft status. He said he understood the anxiety caused by this week’s latest round of reports, even if he found the whole thing somewhat irksome.

“People think, ‘Aha, they’re having an exercise, dusting off the plans, a draft must be right around the corner,’ ” he said.

The reality, said Mr. Flahavan, who spent most of Friday tamping down the fears, is that “this is much ado about nothing.”

“None of that is accurate,” he said.

White House officials did their part to dampen the speculation as well.

“The president’s position has not changed,” said Trey Bohn, a spokesman for the White House. “He supports an all-volunteer military, and the administration is not considering reinstating the draft.”

Although senior military officers agree that the armed forces are stretched, they also agree that a return to the draft is not the best way to fill the ranks. Draftees, they say, are not as motivated as volunteers, and tend to leave as soon as possible, after spending much of their time in costly training. Re-enlistment rates are much higher among volunteers.

Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, has championed the idea of bringing back the draft, calling attention to what he sees as social and economic inequities in the volunteer military. The House rejected his bill in 2004, by 402 votes to 2. Mr. Rangel has said he will try again, but other Democratic leaders have been cool to the idea.

The exercise planned for 2009 would run computerized models to assign random lottery picks by birthday and simulate the processes for notifying those selected and for lodging conscientious objector claims.

William A. Chatfield, director of the Selective Service, said Friday that “we try to send out a signal of strength that we’re prepared.” The Selective Service, he said, needs to be ready “if something totally unforeseen should come upon us.”

But for now, the chances of that happening are “very, very, very low,” Mr. Chatfield said. “There’s nothing even being discussed in a remote fashion, but you have people trying to create fear when there’s nothing there.”

Thom Shanker contributed reporting.

    Flurry of Calls About Draft, and a Day of Denials, NYT, 23.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/washington/23draft.html?hp&ex=1166936400&en=fd1ba4946ac0585a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

President Wants to Increase Size of Armed Forces

December 20, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 — President Bush said Tuesday that the United States should expand the size of its armed forces, acknowledging that the military had been strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and would need to grow to cope with what he suggested would be a long battle against Islamic extremism.

“I’m inclined to believe it’s important and necessary to do,” Mr. Bush said. He said this was an “accurate reflection that this ideological war we’re in is going to last for a while, and that we’re going to need a military that’s capable of being able to sustain our efforts and help us achieve peace.”

Speaking in an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Bush did not specify how large an increase he was contemplating or put a dollar figure on the cost. He said that he had asked his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to bring him a proposal, and that the budget he unveils at the beginning of February would seek approval for the plan from Congress, where many members of both parties have been urging an increase in the military’s size.

In interviews on Tuesday, administration officials said the president was speaking generally about the broader campaign against terrorism and was not foreshadowing a decision on whether to send additional troops into Iraq in coming months in an effort to stabilize Baghdad. Any big change in the size of the American military would take years to accomplish.

Mr. Bush told The Post, which excerpted the interview Tuesday on its Web site, that he had not made a decision about sending more troops to Iraq.

Coming the day after Mr. Gates was sworn in as defense secretary, Mr. Bush’s comments indicated that the administration was breaking abruptly with the stance taken by Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former Pentagon chief, who championed the view that better intelligence and technological advancements could substitute for a bigger military.

Mr. Bush said his plan would focus on ground forces rather than on the Navy and the Air Force, telling The Post, “I’m inclined to believe that we do need to increase our troops — the Army, the Marines.” There are about 507,000 active-duty Army soldiers and 180,000 active-duty marines.

Mr. Bush’s comments were his most direct assessment that the armed forces were facing strain so serious that the nation should invest billions of dollars in expanding the military. Asked directly whether the United States was winning in Iraq, Mr. Bush quoted what he called the “construct” of Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “We’re not winning. We’re not losing.”

The president has come under increasing pressure from allies and critics, including Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who have warned that the Army could break under the stress of the demands it faces.

“I also believe that the suggestions I’ve heard from outside our government, plus people inside the government — particularly the Pentagon — that we need to think about increasing our force structure makes sense, and I will work with Secretary Gates to do so,” Mr. Bush said.

Congress authorized a 30,000-soldier increase in the active-duty Army after the Sept. 11 attacks — when the Army stood at about 484,000 — in what was described as a temporary measure. Army officials say they hope to reach that authorized total troop strength of 514,000 by next year and would like to make that a permanent floor, not a ceiling.

To that end, the Army already has drawn up proposals to grow to up to 540,000, with some retired officers advocating an even larger increase.

The active-duty Army peaked at 1.6 million troops during the Korean conflict and stood at just below that figure during the war in Vietnam, before hovering around 800,000 for much of the 1970s and 1980s, according to Pentagon statistics. Following the first Persian Gulf war, which coincided with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the Army’s active-duty force dropped first to below 600,000 and then below 500,000 before the increases ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Any decision to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps would do little to meet the need for more troops should Mr. Bush order a significant increase of American forces in Iraq in 2007, as it takes considerable time to recruit, train and deploy new troops. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said last week that the Army could probably grow by only 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers per year.

Army officials have estimated that for each addition of 10,000 soldiers to the force, it would cost about $1.2 billion.

While it is not likely to determine the administration’s decision about a short-term increase in troop levels in Iraq, a substantial increase in the size of the American military could give the United States more flexibility in setting and maintaining troop levels there over the long run. Army officials had already drawn up proposals for sustaining the Iraq and Afghanistan missions by drawing heavily on the National Guard and Reserves over the next several years.

But the prospect of mobilizing large numbers of those part-time soldiers would present Mr. Bush with a hugely vexing political problem as the Republican Party prepares for a campaign to hold the White House in 2008. The administration has promised to limit overseas deployments for the Guard and the Reserve, which have been used extensively since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Pentagon and military officials who were briefed on the president’s discussions with the Joint Chiefs of Staff last week said that the classified briefing ranged broader than just how to win in Iraq.

The chiefs argued that the nation must not let the military’s other capabilities lapse from commitments of personnel, equipment and money for Iraq, these officials said.

In particular, the chiefs expressed concerns that the United States must show enough strength to deter potential adversaries from aggressive moves based on an assumption that American power was bogged down in Iraq. That led to a discussion on the merits of expanding the military, officials said.

The president’s statements were applauded by leading members of Congress who specialize in military affairs. Loren Dealy, spokeswoman for Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee, said that Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, who will become chairman of the panel in the new Congress, said after Mr. Bush spoke that “Mr. Skelton has long supported the idea of increasing the end strength in both the Army and the Marine Corps.”

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday night: “I am pleased President Bush has finally recognized the need to increase the overall size of our military. I have been calling for such an expansion for several years.” But Mr. Reed, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division, warned that the battle over troop numbers was not over.

“Now that the president is asking for an increase, he needs to follow through and put the money in the budget to pay for these soldiers,” Mr. Reed said. “It is imperative that this administration step up and honestly budget for the long-term commitment they have made in Iraq. If the president doesn’t put forward a plan to pay for this in his annual budget request then this announcement is meaningless.”

Carl Hulse contributed reporting.

    President Wants to Increase Size of Armed Forces, NYT, 20.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/20/washington/20bush.html?hp&ex=1166677200&en=7ac6d30c774070b9&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Gates takes over Pentagon amid Iraq strategy review

Updated 12/18/2006 1:38 PM ET
AP
USA Today

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Gates assumed the helm at the Pentagon on Monday, lauded by President Bush as "the right man" for the multiple challenges the new defense secretary will face with war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a ceremony at the Pentagon, Gates took the oath of office from Vice President Dick Cheney. He assumed the job earlier Monday in a private swearing-in ceremony at the White House, replacing Donald Rumsfeld.

With several dozen uniformed members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines sitting on stage behind him, Gates expressed his thanks for his new assignment and paid tribute to Rumsfeld as a dedicated public servant.

Gates said he intended to travel to Iraq "quite soon" to consult with top American commanders in the field.

President Bush also thanked Rumsfeld and expressed confidence in Gates, a former CIA director.

"Bob Gates is a talented and innovative leader who brings fresh perspective to the Department of Defense," Bush said.

When President Bush announced last month that he was switching Pentagon chiefs, he said he wanted "fresh perspective" on Iraq, acknowledging the current approach was not working well enough. Rumsfeld was a chief architect of the war strategy and still defends the decision to invade in March 2003.

Gates, 63, takes office amid a wide-ranging administration review of its approach to the war. Bush said last week that he would wait until January to announce his new strategy, to give Gates a chance to offer advice.

Besides the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates faces other immediate challenges. One is the Army's proposal that it be allowed to grow by tens of thousands of soldiers, given the strains it is enduring from the two wars. Rumsfeld had resisted increasing the size of the Army or the Marine Corps; Gates' view is unknown.

Gates said at his Senate confirmation hearing Dec. 5 that he intends to travel to Iraq "very soon" after being sworn in, so he could consult with senior U.S. commanders about how to adjust U.S. strategy. He also raises some eyebrows by saying, when asked whether the U.S. was winning in Iraq, "No, sir."

It's not yet clear whether Gates intends to immediately shake up the Pentagon by firing generals or replacing senior civilian officials. He has asked Gordon England, the deputy defense secretary, to remain, but some have already announced their departures, including the top intelligence official, Stephen Cambone.

With years of public service under Republican and Democratic presidents, Gates has critics but also many admirers.

"He's extremely capable," said Barry McCaffrey, a retired Army general and one of Rumsfeld's loudest critics.

John Douglass, president of the Aerospace Industries Association of America, called Gates a "breath of fresh air."

Rumsfeld told Pentagon employees at a going-away ceremony that he expected Gates to do a good job.

At his confirmation hearing, Gates won plaudits for his candor.

Urged by Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is among the most vocal critics of the Iraq war strategy, to "be a standup person" with the courage to push a war policy worthy of the sacrifices endured by troops and their families, Gates assured the committee that he had no intention of going to the Pentagon to be a "bump on a log."

He pledged to speak candidly and boldly to the president and Congress about what he thinks needs to be done in Iraq. He was a member of the Iraq Study Group that spent nine months assessing the situation in Iraq and produced recommendations that include phasing out most U.S. combat troops by 2008. Gates left the commission when Bush announced that he had been picked to replace Rumsfeld.

"In my view, all options are on the table, in terms of how we address this problem in Iraq," Gates said at his confirmation hearing.

Asked point-blank by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., whether the U.S. is winning in Iraq, Gates replied, "No, sir." That contrasted with Bush's remark at an Oct. 25 news conference that, "Absolutely, we're winning."

Gates, a Kansas native, joined the CIA in 1966. He left in 1974 to join the staff of the National Security Council until 1979, when he returned to the spy agency. He rose to deputy director for intelligence in 1982.

His 1987 nomination to head the CIA was scuttled when he was accused of knowing more than he admitted about the Iran-Contra affair. The Reagan administration secretly had sold arms to Iran in hopes of freeing hostages in Lebanon, and used the money to help the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Gates went to the White House as President Reagan's deputy national security adviser in 1989, then took over the CIA in 1991. He left Washington in 1993 and since August 2002 has been president of Texas A&M University.

    Gates takes over Pentagon amid Iraq strategy review, UT, 18.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-12-18-gates-swearing-in_x.htm

In Farewell, Rumsfeld Warns Weakness Is ‘Provocative’

December 16, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld bade farewell to the Pentagon on Friday with a combative valedictory speech in which he warned against hoping for “graceful exits” from Iraq and said it would be wrong to regard the lack of new attacks on American soil as a sign that the nation is safe from terrorism.

“Today, it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, standing at a lectern with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at his side, “but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well.”

It was a clear parting shot at those considering a withdrawal from war that would define his legacy and perhaps that of the president.

“A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power,” Mr. Rumsfeld said in a buoyant but sometimes emotional speech.

Mr. Rumsfeld resigned in November after an election in which Democrats won control of Congress by promising to force change in Iraq. His successor, Robert M. Gates, takes over on Monday.

Mr. Rumsfeld spoke after receiving full honors on the Pentagon grounds on his last day of work there. The ceremonies began with a 19-gun salute before he walked the grounds to inspect the representatives from all the service branches gathered in formation and in full dress.

Present in the crowd were some of the former administration hawks with whom he planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq: Paul D. Wolfowitz, his former deputy, and Douglas J. Feith, his under secretary for defense policy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, his frequent rival in Mr. Bush’s cabinet, did not attend.

The ceremony brought to a close perhaps the most controversial tenure for a secretary of defense since that of Robert McNamara, whose record tenure in the job bested Mr. Rumsfeld’s by a mere 10 days. Like Mr. McNamara, Mr. Rumsfeld leaves a war he helped conceive in the hands of others.

And like Mr. McNamara, his record is likely to be dissected and debated for years after his resignation.

Yet for all of its pomp, there was little talk at the ceremony about Mr. Rumsfeld’s famously combative style or the controversies he tended to provoke.

In opening remarks, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did refer indirectly to the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which Mr. Rumsfeld has called the low mark of his tenure. But General Pace did so in complimenting Mr. Rumsfeld for ultimately taking the blame for prisoner abuses for which the general placed blame on others down the chain of command.

Mr. Cheney’s declaration that “Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense the nation has ever had,” was more in keeping with the tone of the event.

With Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation — forced by Mr. Bush as he seeks a new approach in Iraq — Mr. Cheney is losing one of his closest allies in the administration.

Mr. Rumsfeld hired Mr. Cheney to work in the Ford administration. Both men served as White House chief of staff, in the House of Representatives and as secretary of defense. (Mr. Rumsfeld has been secretary of defense twice, the first time for President Ford.)

And their shared post-Sept. 11 conviction that the United States must use strength as a deterrent and pre-emptively strike at those who plan to attack the nation has remained unbowed in the face of setbacks in Iraq.

“In this hour of transition every member of our military, and every person at the Pentagon, can be certain that America will stay on the offensive,” Mr. Cheney said. “We will stay in the fight until this threat is defeated and our children and grandchildren can live in a safer world.”

Mr. Rumsfeld leaves the Pentagon having overseen two wars, an attack on the Pentagon itself and what he called a “transformation” in the use of force. That involved a switch to smaller fighting units that he said would be nimbler and more effective than larger ones favored in the past — an approach that saw early success in Afghanistan but has faced a more severe test in Iraq.

Mr. Bush was known to have appreciated Mr. Rumsfeld’s efforts, even as calls for the defense secretary’s resignation grew louder, and he indicated as much on Friday. “There has been more profound change at the Department of Defense over the past six years than at any time since the department’s creation in the late 1940s,” Mr. Bush said. “These changes were not easy, but because of Don Rumsfeld’s determination and leadership, America has the best equipped, the best trained, and most experienced armed forces in the history of the world.”

Mr. Rumsfeld had the last words of the day, using them to warn against backing down in Iraq. “This is a time of great consequence,” he said. “It may well be comforting to some to consider graceful exits from the agonies and, indeed, the ugliness of combat. But the enemy thinks differently.”

    In Farewell, Rumsfeld Warns Weakness Is ‘Provocative’ , NYT, 16.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/16/washington/16prexy.html

Rumsfeld Warns Against ‘Graceful Exits’ From Iraq

December 15, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said farewell to the Pentagon today with a combative address in which he warned against “graceful exits” from Iraq and said it would be wrong to regard the lack of new attacks on American soil as a sign that the nation is safe from terrorism.

“Today it should be clear that not only is weakness provocative,” Mr. Rumsfeld said, standing at lectern with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at his side, “but the perception of weakness on our part can be provocative as well.”

In a clear shot at those considering an American withdrawal from Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power.”

Mr. Rumsfeld has overseen the war in Iraq since the American invasion of March 2003. He spoke after receiving full honors on the Pentagon grounds on his last day of work there. The ceremonies began with a 19-gun salute before he walked the grounds to inspect representatives from all of the branches of the military gathered before him in formation in dress uniforms.

Those present included some former administration hawks with whom he planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq: Paul Wolfowitz, his former deputy, and Douglas Feith, his former undersecretary for defense policy. Not in attendance, Condoleezza Rice, his frequent rival in Mr. Bush’s cabinet.

The ceremony brought to a close perhaps the most controversial tenure for a secretary of defense since that of Robert McNamara during the Vietnam War.Mr. Rumsfeld will miss his record six years in the job by a mere 10 days. Like Mr. McNamara, Mr. Rumsfeld leaves a war he helped conceive in the hands of others.

But he left on a defiant note.

    Rumsfeld Warns Against ‘Graceful Exits’ From Iraq, NYT, 15.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/washington/15cnd-prexy.html?hp&ex=1166245200&en=d2398db5bb756e1e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Rumsfeld honored for years of Pentagon service

Updated 12/15/2006 2:40 PM ET
From staff and wire reports
USA today

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been "one of America's most skilled, energetic and dedicated public servants," President Bush said today as part of a day of praise, pageantry and testimonials for the outgoing Pentagon chief.

Three days before he steps down, the Defense Department saluted Rumsfeld's nearly six years of service in the Bush administration with a full honor review by the armed forces. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were among those praising Rumsfeld.

"This man knows how to lead, and he did — and the country is better off for it," Bush said of Rumsfeld. He praised the secretary's service, saying, "There has been more profound change at the Department of Defense in the past six years than at any time since the department's creation in the late 1940s."

A former Navy aviator, the 74-year-old Rumsfeld is the oldest defense secretary in U.S. history and the only person to have held the position twice. He was the youngest defense secretary when he began his first stint as defense chief in 1975.

When Robert Gates is sworn in as defense secretary on Monday, Rumsfeld will leave office just 10 days short of becoming the longest-serving ever, a distinction held by Vietnam-era Robert McNamara, who left under a cloud of another war gone awry.

And despite his half century in public service, he is being sized up not by the long reach of his career but by its ending — the body slam of Iraq.

With an eye on his legacy, Rumsfeld asked to be judged by the extraordinary nature of today's threat, like none that has come before.

"There's no road map, no guidebook," he said. "The hope has to be — not perfection — but that most decisions, with the perspective of time, will turn out to be the right ones and that the perspective of history will judge the overwhelming majority of those decisions favorably."

In the early going, the assessment is harsh.

Ex-generals asserted he was a failure months before his continued service became untenable, an extraordinary airing of protest. Then came a clamor from Democrats and some Republicans for President Bush to show the door to a man who leaves the Pentagon on Monday after nearly six years on the job.

Fairly or not, he is the public face of a war gone bad, and therefore a tragic figure in the first draft of history.

The primary knocks against him are that he resisted sending enough troops to Iraq, that he was in denial about the likelihood — and then the existence — of an insurgency after Saddam Hussein was brought down, and that he threw out a war plan and went with a flawed one.

"I think his epitaph will be a dark one," said Justin Logan, a foreign policy analyst with the libertarian Cato Institute. "Rumsfeld's one-line epitaph will be, 'The man who was at the helm of the Defense Department and supported what was doomed to be a losing war effort that Americans will remember as a national tragedy'."

Rumsfeld was hardly alone in a national security apparatus that did not see the ferocity of the Iraqi insurgency coming, and prepare for it. Does that make him a scapegoat?

"He was the primary architect of the war plan," said military analyst Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution. "He was no scapegoat. He deserves the blame he received."

Bullheaded and square-jawed, Rumsfeld is also courtly in an old-fashioned way, one of the qualities that made him seem like a man from a different age. He is given to exclamations like "by golly" and "my goodness."

At the height of his power and popularity, Rumsfeld riveted the public with his expansive war briefings, exhibiting an outsized personality that seemed all of a piece with the bold strokes of a military machine rolling up successes in Afghanistan and then Iraq.

He could be dismissive. "Life's hard," he said when members of Congress complained that he didn't give due regard to their concerns. But he could choke up over the sacrifice of the troops.

He seemed to be thinking out loud, in public, a startling thing for anyone in public life in Washington to do.

He'd think out loud about how Osama bin Laden might escape, which he did.

Then he'd put himself in the mind of a terrorist, imagining what must go through a killer's head in deciding whether to keep killing or do something else.

"It's when a person gets up in the morning and says it's not worth it," Rumsfeld mused. "'I'm either dead or I'm wounded or there is no place to go or I don't have food, and I can't get anyone on the telephone, and I don't know what to do next."'

It turned out insurgents in Iraq decided it was worth it.

The toll to date is more than 2,930 U.S. military personnel dead, and Iraqis getting up in the morning to the near certainty of bloodshed that will kill dozens or scores or more by the end of the day.

Beyond the loyal cadre under and around him, Rumsfeld finishes his service with few defenders. To those who opposed the war or came to be against it, he is one among many who deserve blame. He can't win either, among those who continue to believe the war was just.

"They will argue the decision to invade was a good one, the Bush doctrine was sound, but flawed execution by Rumsfeld doomed the enterprise," Logan said.

In sizing up what he hopes new Defense Secretary Robert Gates will bring to the job that Rumsfeld didn't, military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute mentioned humility.

"Donald Rumsfeld liked to carry a list of priorities in his pocket," Thompson said in a retrospective on the defense chief. "There were 10 of them, and they were very ambitious — items like 'transform the joint force' and 'optimize intelligence capabilities.'

"Unfortunately, 'learn to get along with Congress' wasn't one of them. 'Treat the officer corps with respect' wasn't either. As a result, Rumsfeld's agenda never got much traction outside the hermetically sealed circle of ideologues that surrounded him."

O'Hanlon, co-author of Hard Power: The New Politics of National Security, says what makes Rumsfeld a tragic figure was his talent and promise. Leaders from whom little is expected don't make for tragedies.

"He would generate debate and generate a reassessment of assumptions," allowing himself to be talked out of ideas that weren't sound, O'Hanlon said.

"In regard to Iraq," O'Hanlon continued, "his instincts were very bad and he refused to be talked out of them."

At 74, Rumsfeld, a former Navy aviator, is the oldest defense secretary in U.S. history. He became the youngest one in history when he began his first stint as defense chief in 1975. He is the only person to have held the position twice.

And he will fall 10 days short of becoming the longest-serving ever, a distinction held by Vietnam-era Robert McNamara, who left under a cloud of another war gone wrong.

Rumsfeld always took on critics with relish, and he's had plenty lately. Early on, he called the doubters "Henny Penny" from the Chicken Little fable. Since then, to growing numbers in the U.S. and Iraq, the sky really is falling.

Contributing: The Associated Press; Randy Lilleston in McLean, Va.

    Rumsfeld honored for years of Pentagon service, UT, 15.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-12-15-rumsfeld_x.htm

A Missile Defense System Is Taking Shape in Alaska

December 10, 2006
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

FORT GREELY, Alaska, Dec. 4 — Snow fences help keep drifts from piling up on the missile silos. Heat-sensing security devices that monitor the edges of this 800-acre installation are sometimes set off by wayward moose.

And the soldiers here, members of the 3-year-old 49th Missile Defense Battalion of the Alaska National Guard, were just selected to help field test for the Army the third generation of the Extended Cold Weather Clothing System, seven layers of synthetic meant to resist the brutal winds that rip past the snow-clad peaks of the Alaska Range.

Four years after President Bush ordered a limited missile defense system to be built and nearly a quarter century after Ronald Reagan first proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, this sub-Arctic outpost, once a cold war training site and still a cold-weather training site, is where progress on the long-embattled missile system is perhaps most evident, military officials say.

Eleven interceptor missiles are installed in underground silos here, buried beneath the snow and a former forest of black spruce. This summer, when North Korea signaled that it planned to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, Fort Greely, which has never fired a test missile, was put on alert status, ostensibly ready to respond if necessary.

After the test either failed or was aborted, “there was a little bit of a letdown” at the base, said Lt. Col Edward E. Hildreth III, commander of the 49th, “because we were prepared.”

That assertion, echoed by other commanders at Fort Greely during a limited tour of the base this week, comes a little more than three months after Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Fort Greely and expressed caution about the program’s readiness. Critics have noted that tests on some parts of the system have failed and a recent successful missile test — in California, shortly after Mr. Rumsfeld’s visit to Fort Greely — lacked decoys and was unrealistic.

Even as questions persist about capability, the missile defense program is pushing forward at a cost of at least $9 billion a year. About a third of that goes to the kind of operation that is based at Fort Greely, called Ground-Based Midcourse Defense, which is intended to shoot down enemy missiles while they travel through space. Vandenberg Air Force Base in California also houses two interceptors, but military experts say Fort Greely is better situated to interrupt the likely flight path of a missile from Asia or the Middle East.

Just a few years after being shut down, Fort Greely, about 100 miles southeast of Fairbanks, is now the destination of about 1,700 people, including some 200 soldiers, and the rest defense contractors and family members. The base’s Brownie troop is at 16 girls and growing — Monday night they made root beer floats — just as the number of interceptors installed at the base is expected to expand to as many as 38.

Now, in a region with barely four hours of daylight in December, there is a new espresso shop on base and an expanded PX that sells flat-screen televisions.

Sgt. Jack W. Carlson III, an intelligence analyst, said he was assigned to Fort Greely before the Pentagon officials created the 49th Missile Defense Battalion. “We didn’t have a name,” Sergeant Carlson said. “We didn’t have patches. We just called ourselves G.M.D.,” for Ground-Based Midcourse Defense.

Sergeant Carlson married another soldier and has bought a house in nearby Delta Junction, population 840. He said he heated his house mostly with wood salvaged from the spruce left after a wildfire.

Before Fort Greely, he had been stationed in the Virgin Islands. He learned of openings in the missile defense program through an online posting, he said. “I’d been on the beach all my life, and it was time to see the snow.”

Alaska has been crucial to American military interests since long before it became a state in 1959. Now, Adak, in the Aleutian Islands, is scheduled to become the home port of the Sea-Based X-band Radar, a long-delayed system built on a converted oil rig that is critical to the ground-based system’s ability to track enemy missiles.

While the 49th is an Alaska National Guard unit, Colonel Hildreth reports to Col. Michael L. Yowell, commander of the 100th Missile Defense Brigade, based in Colorado.

Colonel Hildreth said he was well aware of criticism that missile defense was far from a perfected program. He said Fort Greely operated in a balance between operational mode and construction.

“We build a little, test a little,” he said. “It’s fluid.”

A 12th interceptor will be installed this month. Last summer, however, when American intelligence learned that North Korea might be preparing to launch an intercontinental missile, much of the bustle of contractors on the site stopped. Fort Greely went on alert. The system that had struggled through tests faced the possibility of firing a live missile.

“It got quiet,” said Col. Thomas M. Besch, director of Ground-Based Midcourse Defense for the Missile Defense Agency. “And all of a sudden no developmental activity occurred. You could feel in the atmosphere that people were on edge and ready. You were kind of waiting for something to happen, and it didn’t.”

    A Missile Defense System Is Taking Shape in Alaska, NYT, 10.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/us/10greely.html

Former Detainees Argue for Right to Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture

December 9, 2006
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — Lawyers for former detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan argued in federal court on Friday that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was personally responsible, and thus legally liable, for acts of torture inflicted on their clients by American military interrogators.

The nine plaintiffs, Iraqi and Afghan men held at American-run prisons, endured an array of physical and psychological abuse during their confinements in 2003 and 2004, including beatings, mock executions and painful physical restraints, their lawyers said in court papers. All were eventually released without being charged with crimes.

The hearing Friday, before Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan in Federal District Court in Washington, was the first time a federal court had considered whether top administration officials could be liable for the torture of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the hearing concerned only questions of jurisdiction and did not delve into whether Mr. Rumsfeld, because he personally approved certain interrogation techniques in 2002 like the use of “stress positions,” was legally responsible for specific acts of torture committed in overseas military prisons.

Instead, lawyers from each side argued over whether noncitizens confined in prisons outside the United States had legal standing to sue Mr. Rumsfeld and other American military officials for constitutional violations.

The suit, filed on behalf of the nine plaintiffs last year by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, also names as defendants three officials responsible for running military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former top commander in Iraq; Col. Thomas M. Pappas, who was the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq; and a former brigadier general, Col. Janis L. Karpinski, who before her demotion to colonel was the military police commander at Abu Ghraib. She was relieved of her command and demoted after abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light.

During the two-and-a-half-hour hearing, Judge Hogan took turns questioning the lawyers. He repeatedly asked lawyers for the former detainees to cite precedents in law that would allow foreigners to sue American officials for what in the United States would be violations of their civil rights.

“How can this work, this theory that nonresident aliens have a right to sue to prevent being tortured?” Judge Hogan asked Lucas Guttentag, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer in the case. What would prevent Osama bin Laden, the judge asked Mr. Guttentag, from taking President Bush to court for authorizing the military to kill him?

Mr. Guttentag, citing several Supreme Court decisions, said that American laws prohibiting torture should apply to foreign civilians under exclusively American control and jurisdiction overseas. He also noted that in Iraq, American military personnel were immune from prosecution under Iraqi laws. “Iraqi law cannot govern, and unless the United States does, nothing else applies.”

Rick Beckner, a deputy assistant attorney general representing Mr. Rumsfeld, argued that foreigners held in an American-run prison in foreign territory had no legal standing to sue. “There’s never been any finding that the Constitution applies to these plaintiffs,” he told Judge Hogan.

Judge Hogan, clearly skeptical of the plaintiffs’ attempt to open federal officials to legal liability for actions by troops overseas, said he hoped to make a decision quickly to dismiss the case or allow some or all claims to proceed.

But in his closing remarks, the judge also acknowledged being disturbed by the allegations of detainee abuse and torture. “It is unfortunate, to say the least, that there has to be an argument” about whether the American military tortures foreign citizens.

    Former Detainees Argue for Right to Sue Rumsfeld Over Torture, NYT, 9.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/washington/09torture.html

Pentagon Memo

A Still-Serving Rumsfeld Is Set for Mustering Out

December 9, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — As Donald H. Rumsfeld might say, you change strategy in Iraq with the defense secretary you have, not the one you might like.

It was a month ago that Mr. Rumsfeld announced his resignation, cast out by the White House to signal a course correction in Iraq. His successor, Robert M. Gates, has already been overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate.

Yet when President Bush comes to the Pentagon on Wednesday, Mr. Rumsfeld will preside in the secure conference room known as “the Tank” when he and the Joint Chiefs brief Mr. Bush on the department’s recommendations for a new way forward.

Mr. Gates is not scheduled to be sworn in until Dec. 18, though he has a temporary office on the Pentagon’s third floor, and administration officials said that he will be involved in meetings and consult on the strategy shift.

How much influence Mr. Rumsfeld is exerting in the interim is somewhat unclear. Two of his top aides, Peter W. Rodman and Stephen A. Cambone, have already announced their resignations. He has told other senior officials at the department that they should hold off any major decisions to give Mr. Gates a chance to review them after he takes office.

Aides say that Mr. Rumsfeld has remained on the job not from any desire to cling to power, but because President Bush specifically asked him to stay until his successor was in place. He has spoken with Mr. Gates twice, he said Friday.

It is the second time in his career that Mr. Rumsfeld, who also served as defense secretary during the Ford administration, has stepped down from the job, and he leaves 11 days shy of breaking Robert S. McNamara’s record as the longest serving defense secretary.

Taking questions Friday at an hourlong farewell to Pentagon employees, Mr. Rumsfeld became emotional and wiped his nose as he reviewed his tenure and accomplishments.

“I wish I could say that everything we have done here had gone perfectly, but that’s not how life works, regrettably,” he said.

In private, too, Mr. Rumsfeld has also seemed at times wistful about giving up the vast resources of his office. Shortly after announcing his resignation, the 73-year-old Mr. Rumsfeld, who dictated his memos into a recorder to be transcribed and disdained e-mail correspondence, told his aides: “I guess I’m going to have to get a computer.”

He was not surprised by President Bush’s decision to replace him the day after the midterm elections, several current and former aides said. He and Mr. Bush had talked several times about whether Mr. Rumsfeld could still operate effectively, especially if the Democrats took control of both the House and Senate, they said.

But the way the White House handled the departure remains a source of bitterness to some in Mr. Rumsfeld’s inner circle. The choice of Mr. Gates after Mr. Bush had said in the week before Election Day that he wanted Mr. Rumsfeld to stay until the end of his term made it seem as if the change had been made abruptly, one Rumsfeld adviser said.

And it led some Republicans, bitter over their losses in the election, to wonder why Mr. Bush had not replaced him before the election when it might have helped their fortunes, the Rumsfeld adviser said.

“The way it was handled turned out to be unsatisfactory to all, except the Democrats,” the adviser said.

As the disclosure this month of a memo Mr. Rumsfeld wrote outlining options for switching course in Iraq makes clear, the secretary has his own ideas about what should be done in Iraq.

Lawrence Di Rita, who served as a top Pentagon aide until resigning last year, said that the memo, which listed 21 options — many of them calling for reducing the American presence in Iraq — revealed Mr. Rumsfeld’s willingness to offer up completely different ways of thinking. “Nothing was sacred to him,” Mr. Di Rita said.

But when he met on Friday with employees at the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld counseled patience in Iraq, warning that “to pull out precipitously and inject that instability into the situation there” would be “a terrible mistake.”

The session also featured moments of vintage Rumsfeld, when he was not the battered figure who has become a symbol of a strategy gone wrong in Iraq, but the jaunty defense secretary whose verbal sparring once made his news conferences Washington’s most entertaining show.

When a young military aide interrupted the proceedings to say there was time for one more question, Mr. Rumsfeld was having none of it. “I’ll decide if it’s the last question,” he said.

In his final days, Mr. Rumsfeld still appears engaged, department officials say. He is still issuing “snowflakes,” the memos that waft down to the bureaucracy from Mr. Rumsfeld himself and that are used to ask questions, stimulate debate and shape policy.

Nor has Mr. Rumsfeld given up on some of his favorite projects. Last week, his aides were still hoping to win White House approval to create a new regional command covering Africa, which is now under the purview of the United States European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Mr. Rumsfeld is still convening morning “roundtables,” when a rotating cast of officials is called to his conference room to hash out issues. In the last week, he told a senior military officer that he was not satisfied with a briefing and told the officer to come back in January for another try.

Left unstated was that Mr. Rumsfeld would not be around to hear it.

His sometimes brusque treatment of high-ranking military officers accounts for the private glee with which some Pentagon officers view his departure.

Even the Iraq Study Group, the independent panel that issued recommendations for changing strategy in Iraq this week, felt compelled to call on Mr. Gates to create “an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice.”

In a more jocular way, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seemed to say much the same thing while standing next to Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon forum on Friday.

When a questioner asked what advice Mr. Rumsfeld would have for his successor, General Pace immediately jumped in with his own answer. “Listen to the chairman,” he said.

    A Still-Serving Rumsfeld Is Set for Mustering Out, NYT, 9.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/washington/09rumsfeld.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Editorial

The Un-Rumsfeld

December 6, 2006
The New York Times

The nearly universal (and bipartisan) relief at the departure of Donald Rumsfeld ensured that Robert Gates would have an easy confirmation hearing. And Mr. Gates played the role of the un-Rumsfeld masterfully yesterday. He offered just enough candor and conciliation to persuade most senators that he plans to be a very different sort of defense secretary, while deftly holding back any real information about how he plans to clean up President Bush’s mess in Iraq.

Mr. Gates’s truth-telling did not go much further than acknowledging what is obvious to everyone but this White House. He agreed with various senators that the United States is not winning in Iraq, that politicians in Baghdad need to be pressured into negotiating a political settlement, and that the Pentagon botched the post-invasion by failing to send enough troops and committing other now infamous errors.

He was less accommodating when asked to share his prescriptions for Iraq, saying only that he was open to all ideas. Given both President Bush’s and Mr. Rumsfeld’s unrelenting denials of Iraq’s disastrous reality — and their refusal to accept the advice of others — even statements of the obvious and a pledge to keep an open mind sound good. But Iraq is unraveling so fast that Mr. Gates will have to come up with opinions quickly, and be willing to express them to the president forcefully.

Mr. Bush has certainly shown little sign of opening his mind. Since announcing Mr. Gates’s nomination, he has sought to pre-empt the much-anticipated advice of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group (on which Mr. Gates served), brushing off suggestions that he talk directly to Iran and insisting that there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq.

Still, Mr. Gates seems at least game to try to break through the wall. He said that Iraq was only “one of the central fronts” in the war on terror — a departure from the official litany. He said that he did not believe that the president had been given authority — either under the 9/11 war resolution or the Iraq war resolution — to attack Iran or Syria (and would counsel against it). And he said bringing both countries into negotiations about Iraq’s future at least “merits thinking about.”

In any other time that would all be considered pretty bland stuff. But for an aspiring member of this administration, that came close to speaking truth to power.

    The Un-Rumsfeld, NYT, 6.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/opinion/06wed1.html

Rumsfeld honored for citizenship amid protests

Fri Dec 1, 2006 10:49 PM ET
Reuters
By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was honored for citizenship by a patriotic organization on Friday as peace protesters outside criticized his role as one of the architects of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Rumsfeld, whose departure was announced by President George W. Bush the day after the Republican defeat in the November 7 midterm elections, was awarded a gold medal by the Union League, a Philadelphia organization founded in 1862 to support President Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War.

Rumsfeld's award outraged some Philadelphians who said the Union League should not be honoring the man who headed the Pentagon during the Abu Ghraib scandal involving the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and who played a leading role in what they said was a misguided and poorly executed war.

"This man is responsible for my son's death, and this place of wealth and privilege has given him an award," said Celeste Zappala, whose son Sgt. Sherwood Baker, a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard, was killed in Baghdad in April 2004.

Patricia Tobin, a spokeswoman for the Union League, said only six out of 3,100 members objected to the award, and that the ceremony, with an expected attendance of some 700 people, was a sellout. "That's very good for an event here," she said. The event was closed to the media.

Outside the ornate Union League building in central Philadelphia, about 25 protesters carrying placards saying: "Rumsfeld War Criminal" and "Rumsfeld Award Demeans Union League," shouted, "Shame" and "End the war" at tuxedo-clad guests as they arrived for the event.

"It's a mistake to honor him," protester Tom Roberts said. "I think he created a situation where Abu Ghraib could happen easily."

The Pentagon made no official comment on the award.

    Rumsfeld honored for citizenship amid protests, R, 1.12.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-12-02T034840Z_01_N01394071_RTRUKOC_0_US-RUMSFELD.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general

Sat Nov 25, 2006 11:45 AM ET
Reuters



MADRID (Reuters) - Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the prison's former U.S. commander said in an interview on Saturday.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to comment on Karpinski's accusations, while U.S. army in Iraq could not immediately be reached for comment.

Karpinski was withdrawn from Iraq in early 2004, shortly after photographs showing American troops abusing detainees at the prison were flashed around the world. She was subsequently removed from active duty and then demoted to the rank of colonel on unrelated charges.

Karpinski insists she knew nothing about the abuse of prisoners until she saw the photos, as interrogation was carried out in a prison wing run by U.S. military intelligence.

Rumsfeld also authorized the army to break the Geneva Conventions by not registering all prisoners, Karpinski said, explaining how she raised the case of one unregistered inmate with an aide to former U.S. commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez.

"We received a message from the Pentagon, from the Defense Secretary, ordering us to hold the prisoner without registering him. I now know this happened on various occasions."

Karpinski said last week she was ready to testify against Rumsfeld, if a suit filed by civil rights groups in Germany over Abu Ghraib led to a full investigation.

President Bush announced Rumsfeld's resignation after Democrats wrested power from the Republicans in midterm elections earlier this month, partly due to public criticism over the Iraq war.

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington)

    Rumsfeld okayed abuses says former U.S. general, R, 25.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-11-25T164527Z_01_L25726413_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-RUMSFELD.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

Editorial

The Army We Need

November 19, 2006
The New York Times

One welcome dividend of Donald Rumsfeld’s departure from the Pentagon is that the United States will now have a chance to rebuild the Army he spent most of his tenure running down.

Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t like the lessons the Army drew from Vietnam — that politicians should not send American troops to fight a war of choice unless they went in with overwhelming force, a clearly defined purpose and strong domestic backing. He didn’t like the Clintonian notion of using the United States military to secure and rebuild broken states.

And when circumstances in Afghanistan and Iraq called for just the things Mr. Rumsfeld didn’t like, he refused to adapt, letting the Army, and American interests, pay the price for his arrogance.

So one of the first challenges for the next defense secretary and the next Congress is to repair, rebuild and reshape the nation’s ground forces. They need to renew the morale and confidence of America’s serving men and women and restore the appeal of career military service for the brightest young officers.

That will require building a force large enough to end more than three years of unsustainably rapid rotations of units back into battle, misuse of the National Guard, overuse of the Reserves and conscription of veterans back into active service.

Congress also needs to work harder at rebuilding the links between the battlefront and the home front that a healthy democracy needs. That does not require reinstating the draft — a bad idea for military as well as political reasons. It requires a Congress willing to resume its proper constitutional role in debating and deciding essential questions of war and peace. If Congress continues to shirk that role, expanding the ground forces would invite some future administration to commit American forces recklessly to dubious wars of choice.

But keeping the Army in its present straitjacket would bring bigger and more immediate problems. Even assuming an early exit from Iraq, the Army’s overall authorized strength needs to be increased some 75,000 to 100,000 troops more than Mr. Rumsfeld had in mind for the next few years.

A force totaling 575,000 would permit the creation of two new divisions for peacekeeping and stabilization missions, a doubling of special operations forces and the addition of 10,000 to the military police to train and supplement local police forces. The Marine Corps, currently 175,000, needs to be expanded to at least 180,000 and shifted from long-term occupation duties toward its real vocation as a tactical assault force ready for rapid deployment.

That big an increase cannot be achieved overnight. It will take many months, and many billions of dollars, to recruit, train and equip these men and women. Every 10,000 added will cost roughly $1.5 billion in annual upkeep, plus tens of billions in one-time recruitment and equipment expenses.

But all the needed money can be found by reordering priorities within the defense budget. Thanks to six years of hefty budget increases, there is no shortage of defense dollars. They just need to go where the actual wars are. Contrary to pre-9/11 predictions, the early 21st century did not turn out to be an era of futuristic stealthy combat in the skies and high seas. Instead, American forces have been slogging it out in a succession of unconventional ground wars and nation-building operations.

If the new Pentagon leaders and the new Congress are prepared to take on the military contracting lobbies, they could take as much as $60 billion now going to Air Force fighters, Navy destroyers and Army systems designed for the conventional battlefield and shift it to training and equipping more soldiers for unconventional warfare. America cannot afford to dribble away money on corporate subsidies disguised as military necessities.

Congress also needs to hold the executive branch accountable for the use of American troops abroad. Administration officials must be pressed to explain intelligence claims and offer plausible strategies. Pentagon leaders should be instructed to stop using National Guard units for overseas combat instead of homeland security. And uniformed commanders should be pushed for candid assessments about conditions on the ground and the realistic choices available to policy makers.

Rebuilding the Army and Marine Corps is an overdue necessity. But it is only the first step toward repairing the damage done to America’s military capacities and credibility over the past six years.

    The Army We Need, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/opinion/19sun1.html

Pentagon Pick Returns to City He Gladly Left

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 — Since 1993, when Robert M. Gates left Washington after completing 14 months as head of the Central Intelligence Agency saying it was “time to get a life,” he has recalled the capital’s clashing egos and the news media’s magnifying glass less than fondly.

Mr. Gates has kept his distance, basking in the tranquillity of a lakefront house near Seattle and then in the homespun rituals of Texas A&M University, where he has served as president since 2002. He has recalled the public battering he took in two Senate confirmation hearings as “unpredictable, frustrating, exhausting, insulting, humiliating” — in short, “a lot like a root canal.”

Well, welcome back to the dentist’s chair, Mr. Gates.

Nominated by President Bush to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary, Mr. Gates, if he is confirmed as expected, will face challenges that dwarf even those he saw in the tumultuous last years of the cold war. With troops stretched thin and with no Pentagon experience, Mr. Gates will search for answers to the bloody civil strife in Iraq, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism around the world.

“Things are so difficult and so complicated, it may be beyond anyone’s ability to be successful,” said Brent Scowcroft, a mentor and admirer of Mr. Gates.

“I think he’s crazy to take the job,” said Mr. Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush, “and I’m very glad he’s doing it.”

Mr. Gates’s life has embodied some paradoxes. He is a courteous 63-year-old native of Kansas who put himself through college as a grain inspector and school bus driver, an Eagle Scout who still serves in national scouting posts and likes to say that “every boy that joins the Scouts is a boy on the right track.” He is revered at Texas A&M, where he won over faculty skeptics and plunged into student life, leading the midnight-Friday pre-football-game “yell practices” and rising before dawn to jog with the Corps of Cadets.

Former bosses and many of his colleagues from the C.I.A. and the National Security Council speak in superlatives of Mr. Gates’s quiet brainpower, steadiness and rectitude. “There’s a Sgt. Joe Friday quality about him,” said Richard N. Haas, who served with him on the security council staff. “There’s a stoic quality. It’s the analyst in him.”

Robert D. Blackwill, a veteran diplomat who also was a security council colleague, calls him “an utterly honorable person.”

“I saw him many times every day for several years,” Mr. Blackwill said, “and I never once saw him cut a corner or suggest anything improper.”

Such praise notwithstanding, Mr. Gates’s government service survived two episodes in which his professional ethics were challenged.

First his truthfulness came under question in the Iran-contra affair, derailing his 1987 nomination to head the C.I.A.

A special prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, found Mr. Gates’s statements “less than candid” and wrote in his final report that he did not bring criminal charges only because “a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies.”

Thomas Polgar, a career C.I.A. officer who became a Senate investigator on Iran-contra, said in an interview that Mr. Gates’s testimony was unconvincing. “For a guy with such a good memory, it was astonishing how much he forgot,” Mr. Polgar said.

In the second episode, Mr. Gates was accused by several former C.I.A. subordinates in 1991 of a cardinal sin for an intelligence analyst: politicizing intelligence by tailoring reports on the Soviet Union to fit his own and his bosses’ hard-line views.

Although he was confirmed, 31 senators voted against him. “Congress owes it to the American people to ask: Has this man learned a lesson?” said Jennifer L. Glaudemans, who testified against Mr. Gates as a C.I.A. analyst in 1991.

Mr. Gates’s backers, who are legion among veterans of intelligence and diplomacy, say the accusations came from disgruntled analysts who acted out of personal animus and never deserved the attention they got.

“I think it’s an extraordinary example of his patriotism,” Mr. Blackwill said, “that he’s willing to give up a job he loves and get back in the Washington cauldron.”

Mr. Gates grew up a long way from that cauldron, in a middle-class Wichita neighborhood. His father sold auto parts wholesale, and his older brother, Jim, would become a school principal.

At East High School, Bob Gates was a straight-A student who sang in the boys’ choir and once put together a collection of animal brains.

A classmate, Hal Ottaway, remembers his friend taking him to the local courthouse to sit in on trials. “We saw horrible divorce cases,” Mr. Ottaway said. “It was eye-opening. We both had led pretty sheltered lives.”

Mr. Gates won a scholarship to the College of William and Mary, where he studied history, and went on to earn a master’s degree at Indiana University. There he met his wife, Rebecca Wilkie Gates. They have two grown children, Eleanor and Brad.

At Indiana, Mr. Gates met with a C.I.A. recruiter and was offered a job as a Soviet analyst but first served 15 months in the Air Force keeping missile crews in Missouri abreast of international political and military developments.

“Their lack of interest was awesome,” Mr. Gates wrote with characteristic deadpan humor in a 1996 memoir, “From the Shadows.”

In 1974, he completed work on a Ph.D. at Georgetown, writing his dissertation on Soviet views of China and, at 31, won an assignment to the National Security Council staff.

He would serve two stints at the security council totaling seven years under four presidents, both Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. Gates had great confidence in his own skills and views, which quickly attracted the attention of William Casey, who was director of central intelligence under President Ronald Reagan.

“He was a wunderkind, and a little bit of brashness goes with that,” said James M. Olson, who spent his career at the C.I.A. and now teaches at Texas A&M.

In 1983, when Mr. Casey promoted Mr. Gates over more experienced analysts to the post of deputy director for intelligence, he gave analysts the “junkyard dog speech,” recalled Arthur S. Hulnick, a retired agency veteran. Mr. Gates sharply criticized the quality of work and declared, “I’m going to set a bunch of junkyard dogs loose to make sure your analysis is good,” Mr. Hulnick said.

Richard J. Kerr, a veteran analyst who later served as Mr. Gates’s deputy, said the agency’s analysis “had become lax and sloppy, and Bob set out to change that.”

There were also ideological differences, Mr. Kerr said: “Some analysts looked at the Soviets and saw a glass half full. Bob always saw it as half empty.”

The resulting friction, he said, prompted the charges of politicization, which he felt were unfair. Ms. Glaudemans, however, insists that Mr. Gates rejected reports on subjects that included the Soviet role in terrorism and Soviet influence on Iran that did not fit his preconceptions. Sometimes, she said, he sent back reports he did not like “stapled to the burn bag,” implying they should be destroyed.

Ms. Glaudemans said that in 1989, when Mr. Gates had left for the security council, he requested a C.I.A. memorandum on Soviet prospects if Mikhail S. Gorbachev did not last. An initial version, allowing for the possibility that reform would continue under Boris N. Yeltsin or another leader, was rejected, she said, because Mr. Gates wanted the paper to predict a return to neo-Stalinism.

“I took my name off the paper,” said Ms. Glaudemans, who then left the C.I.A. and is now a lawyer. “Gates was a brutal manager to people who stood up to him and Casey.”

When Mr. Casey died, President Reagan named the 44-year-old Mr. Gates to succeed him. But when some Democratic senators doubted Mr. Gates’s insistence that he knew nothing about secret arms sales to Iran and diversion of the proceeds to help the Nicaraguan contra rebels to Iran, he withdrew his nomination.

Loath to lose his services, President George Bush named him as Mr. Scowcroft’s deputy in 1989 and for a second time as C.I.A. director in 1991.

Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of state who had worked closely with Mr. Gates on the N.S.C. staff, went on television during the contentious hearings to defend him.

“I can only go by my experiences with Bob Gates, and this is a man of tremendous integrity,” said Ms. Rice, who had returned to the Stanford faculty.

A few months after taking the helm of the C.I.A., Mr. Gates gathered the employees in the auditorium to speak about the dangers of politicizing intelligence. He described the confirmation dispute as “wrenching, embarrassing, even humiliating” and admitted that in 25 years he might not have “always drawn the line” correctly.

Most of the speech, however, covered a series of proposed reforms to reduce the possibility of political spin, including the appointment of an internal ombudsman.

After his brief tenure as director of central intelligence, Mr. Gates retreated from the capital to the mountains north of Seattle. He consulted, wrote and earned money from speaking engagements and corporate boards.

Persuaded by Mr. Scowcroft to become interim dean of the George Bush School of Government at Texas A&M, Mr. Gates was offered the university presidency two years later.

The faculty had doubts about the appointment, said R. Douglas Slack, an ecologist and speaker of the faculty senate, who acknowledges he imagined “secrecy, intrigue and black helicopters.”

But Mr. Gates steadily won over professors and students. He found financing to add 450 faculty members, and he improved racial and economic diversity, sometimes by personally handing out scholarships in poor neighborhoods. He also began an ambitious building program.

“He’s a leader, but he’s not bombastic,” Mr. Slack said. “I’ve been here 30 years, and he’s the best president I’ve served under.”

On Nov. 10, two days after his nomination as defense secretary, Mr. Gates addressed 30,000 people gathered for the “midnight yell practice” and spoke briefly, mixing football boosterism with glancing references to his impending departure.

“I have only one request of you as Aggies,” he concluded, his voice breaking with emotion, “and that’s to never forget the importance of duty and honor and country.”

Many in the audience wept, according to people who were there, and the applause on the YouTube clip is deafening. It was a reception he is unlikely to get in Washington.

    Pentagon Pick Returns to City He Gladly Left, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/washington/19gates.html?hp&ex=1163998800&en=01019dcc18db822b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Defense pick Gates remembered as elegant, arrogant

Fri Nov 17, 2006 2:34 AM ET
Reuters
By Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Gates, in his first stab at large-scale government leadership, chastised the staff he inherited at a CIA division and said he would unleash a "junkyard dog" on their flabby intelligence work.

That 1982 speech, according to analysts who heard it, created an intimidating impression still carried 24 years later by the man chosen to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon amid criticism of America's management of the Iraq war.

"He frightened everybody," said Arthur Hulnick, a Boston University professor of international relations and 30-year CIA veteran.

Gates, who has not spoken publicly since President George W. Bush announced his plan to change the Pentagon's leadership last week, heads to Capitol Hill on Friday to begin meeting with key senators who will decide if he gets the job.

Gates, 63, directed the CIA from 1991-93 during Bush's father's presidency and is now president of Texas A&M University. A veteran cold warrior who has a doctorate in Soviet history, Gates is viewed as a pragmatist on foreign policy and has advocated U.S. dialogue with Iran and North Korea.

Until his nomination as defense secretary, Gates was a member of the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that is looking at alternative strategies for Iraq.

One former senior U.S. official who knows him well predicted Gates would influence U.S. policy broadly, including on Iran, North Korea, China, intelligence, the war on terror and Mideast peace.

CONTRASTING IMPRESSIONS

Congressional staffers say senators will consider Gates's qualifications, history and his ability to take on a vast department and run the war in Iraq, which many view as being on the wrong path.

Interviews with some of Gates' former colleagues paint two contrasting pictures of the man Bush hopes will provide a fresh perspective on the war.

Some called him "intimidating," "arrogant" and "a tyrant."

He was criticized as politically motivated by some who maintain Gates massaged intelligence to fit President Ronald Reagan's hard-line anti-Soviet views in the 1980s -- a charge that could harm him in the Iraq debate.

"I don't expect him to tell truth to power, which I think is required of someone in a principal position," said Melvin Goodman, former CIA Soviet Affairs division chief and senior analyst who accused Gates of politicizing intelligence during his Senate confirmation hearings in 1991.

And critically for many now inside the Pentagon, some of Gates' former CIA subordinates describe him as a man so demanding and so assured in his own intellect that he accepts little that does not agree with his views.

That same charge has plagued Rumsfeld.

"I'm expecting a lot more of the same," a U.S. defense official said.

Still others say those charges are unfair and untrue.

Some who worked with Gates later and during his time with the National Security Council are far more positive, calling him everything from "elegant" in presenting positions on national security to "thoughtful" and "brilliant" in analysis.

"He's one of the brightest guys around," said retired Navy Adm. William Studeman, who was deputy director of the CIA when Gates left the agency in 1993.

A White House spokeswoman said Gates would not grant interviews before his confirmation hearings, expected to begin the week of December 4.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan)

    Defense pick Gates remembered as elegant, arrogant, NYT, 17.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-11-17T073415Z_01_N16483167_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CONGRESS-GATES.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

Military may ask $127B for wars

Posted 11/16/2006 11:17 PM ET
USA Today
By Richard Wolf

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is preparing its largest spending request yet for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a proposal that could make the conflict the most expensive since World War II.

The Pentagon is considering $127 billion to $160 billion in requests from the armed services for the 2007 fiscal year, which began last month, several lawmakers and congressional staff members said. That's on top of $70 billion already approved for 2007.

Since 2001, Congress has approved $502 billion for the war on terror, roughly two-thirds for Iraq. The latest request, due to reach the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress next spring, would make the war on terror more expensive than the Vietnam War.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who will chair the Senate Budget Committee next year, said the amount under consideration is "$127 billion and rising." He said the cost "is going to increasingly become an issue" because it could prevent Congress from addressing domestic priorities, such as expanding Medicare prescription drug coverage.

Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., who put the expected request at $160 billion, said such a sizable increase still "won't solve the problem" in Iraq.

Bill Hoagland, a senior budget adviser to Senate Republicans, said: "At a minimum, they were looking at $130 (billion). If it goes higher than that, I'm not surprised."

The new request being considered for the war on terror would be about one-fourth what the government spends annually on Social Security — and 10 times what it spends on its space program.

The White House called the figures premature. "They don't reflect a decision by the administration," said budget office spokeswoman Christin Baker. "It is much too early in the process to make that determination."

Before the Iraq war began in 2003, the Bush administration estimated its cost at $50 billion to $60 billion, though White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey had suggested in 2002 that it could cost as much as $200 billion.

Growing opposition to the war contributed to Democrats' takeover of the House and Senate in this month's elections. Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha, an early critic of the war who lost his bid Thursday to be the House Democratic leader, vowed to use his clout as chairman of the House panel that reviews the Pentagon budget "to get these troops out of Iraq and get back on track and quit spending $8 billion a month."

"The war's been an extraordinarily expensive undertaking, both in lives and in dollars," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.

The new request is top-heavy with Army and Air Force costs to replace and repair equipment and redeploy troops, Hoagland said. That's why the 2007 cost is likely to top the war's average annual price tag.

Overall, he said, "we're easily headed toward $600 billion." That would top the $536 billion cost of Vietnam in today's dollars. World War II cost an inflation-adjusted $3.6 trillion.

Leon Panetta, President Clinton's former chief of staff and a member of a bipartisan panel studying recommendations on Iraq for President Bush, said the Pentagon needs $50 billion to $60 billion to "restore the units that are being brought back here, to re-equip them and get them back to a combat-readiness status."

    Military may ask $127B for wars, UT, 16.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-16-iraq-costs_x.htm

Op-Ed Contributor

An Army of One Less

November 10, 2006
The New York Times
By PAUL D. EATON

Fox Island, Wash.

DURING the Watergate scandal, as I remember it, Garry Trudeau published a “Doonesbury” strip in which an embattled President Richard Nixon asks his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, “Well, the Army’s still with us ... right?”

Haldeman replies, “Sir, I’ll go check.”

Perhaps President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld had a similar discussion after the midterm election results came in, and Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation as secretary of defense indicates what the answer was.

So, what will the new Democratic-controlled House and Senate and the new Pentagon, apparently to be led by Robert Gates, have to accomplish over the next two years to bring the Army — and the other services — back “with” us? I have a few suggestions.

First, on Iraq, the Democratic leadership needs to push the administration to move immediately on whatever recommendations come from the Iraq Study Group led by James Baker and Lee Hamilton. The decision to hold the commission’s report until after the election was political idiocy — every day we wait risks the lives of our soldiers and our Iraqi allies.

At the same time, we need a Manhattan Project-level effort to build the Iraqi security forces. A good blueprint can be found in an article in the July-August Military Review by Lt. Col. Douglas Ollivant, a former operations officer with the Army’s Fifth Cavalry Regiment in Iraq, and Lt. Eric D. Chewning. The plan is to create new multifaceted battalions — blending infantry, armor, engineers and other specialists — that would live and work beside Iraqi security forces and civilians. Some of our troops, working largely at the platoon level, have had great success along these lines; but as the authors note, such small units “lack the robust staff and sufficient mass to fully exploit local relationships.” It’s time to replicate that success on a larger scale.

Democrats in Congress must also demand that the administration abide by the old adage, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” in the Middle East. We should return our ambassador to Syria and re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran as first steps in building a coalition of Iraq’s neighbors to plan the way forward. While their motives may not be identical to ours, they have little desire to see Iraq dissolve into civil war.

It is also vital to reinvigorate the military leadership. First, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, must begin to act in the role prescribed by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. This requires the senior man in uniform to have direct access to the president, a role denied to him and his predecessor, Gen. Richard Myers, by Mr. Rumsfeld.

As for the next secretary of defense, he must stand up to his own party. Congressional Republicans have told the Army that 512,000 troops are enough, and that the Pentagon should pay for them with the money already allocated, a zero sum game. This would mean raiding the funds that are supposed to go toward the first real Army modernization program since the Reagan years. (Today, military spending is 4 percent of gross domestic product, as opposed to 6.2 percent during the hugely successful Reagan build-up and more than 9 percent during the Vietnam War.)

The Army must rise to at least 570,000 troops to meet the demands placed on it. Before he was forced out as Army chief of staff in 2003, Gen. Eric Shinseki warned us to “beware the 12-division foreign policy with a 10-division Army.” That was a spot-on prediction of the problem we face today.

One thing everyone in Washington should agree on is that we must not allow Iraq to become a failed state. With Mr. Gates, look for a fresh start and fresh plan — with both parties, and the entire cabinet and the military working through a robust interagency process — to ensure it doesn’t happen.

Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general, was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.

    An Army of One Less, NYT, 10.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/opinion/10eaton.html

Removal of Rumsfeld Dates Back to Summer

November 10, 2006
The New York Times
By JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 — President Bush was moving by late summer toward removing Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary, people inside and outside the White House said Thursday. Weeks before Election Day, the essential question still open was when, not whether, to make the move.

Mr. Bush ultimately postponed action until after the election in part because of concern that to remove Mr. Rumsfeld earlier could be interpreted by critics as political opportunism or as ratifying their criticism of the White House war plan in the heart of the campaign, the White House insiders and outsiders said.

The White House has refused to divulge the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that went into Mr. Rumsfeld’s announced resignation on Wednesday. Those who were interviewed would speak only on condition of anonymity, but included officials at the White House and those in a close circle of outside advisers. They said the administration had been engaged in painful off-again-on-again discussions about Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster for months, even as Mr. Bush said repeatedly that Mr. Rumsfeld was his man for Iraq.

The delay in Mr. Rumsfeld’s departure was painful for some Republicans, who have argued that his continued presence in the administration was politically counterproductive. Some complained Thursday that the resignation had come too late to be any help during an election in which Mr. Rumsfeld became a whipping boy for Democratic, and eventually some Republican, candidates.

The people who agreed to speak about White House thinking said that Mr. Bush had resisted earlier entreaties by aides and outside advisers who urged that Mr. Rumsfeld be removed — in part because of a deep sense of loyalty to the defense secretary, not to mention Vice President Dick Cheney’s own longstanding ties to Mr. Rumsfeld. They said Mr. Bush was also influenced by his deep appreciation for Mr. Rumsfeld’s work in overseeing two wars and transforming the military, and, in an unintended fashion, by the loud calls last spring from former generals for Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster, which they said had caused the president to dig in to support the defense secretary.

In addition, officials said, Mr. Bush did not have an immediate idea for a successor.

The man Mr. Bush chose, Robert M. Gates, ultimately came from the world of Mr. Bush’s father, having served in his administration as director of central intelligence during the Persian Gulf war of 1991. Mr. Gates is also close to James A. Baker III, the elder Mr. Bush’s longtime political consigliere, and is a member of Mr. Baker’s Iraq Study Group.

But, officials said, the decision to replace Mr. Rumsfeld with Mr. Gates was made by the president, in close consultation with Mr. Rumsfeld and with advice from a group of close advisers. The group — including the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett — was led by Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, who came into his job last spring wanting to send clear signals that Mr. Bush was ready to make major changes to save an unpopular presidency.

Mr. Bolten took over just after the retired generals had stepped forward to call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s dismissal, a striking break with military tradition. A senior official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said the generals had in effect ensured Mr. Rumsfeld’s job security, because the White House was unwilling to make any move that could be interpreted as the civilian leadership buckling under pressure from the military establishment. Still, “Without question it’s been in the works for a long time,” said Fred Malek, a Washington financier with longtime ties to Mr. Bush and his father.

“I don’t think he initiated it,” Mr. Malek said of Mr. Rumsfeld. But, he said, “I don’t think he resisted it,” adding that at 74 and after six years at the helm during two wars, Mr. Rumsfeld was ready to step aside.

For months, if not years, the walls had seemed to be closing in on Mr. Rumsfeld, who was a polarizing figure within the White House itself..

Some political strategists close to Mr. Bush regularly complained that Mr. Rumsfeld had become a liability. Tension between him and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spilled into view in the spring, when they publicly argued about her statement that there had been “thousands” of tactical mistakes in Iraq.

Ms. Rice is among Mr. Bush’s closest advisers, but an aide refused to discuss her private conversations with the president.

The former White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., has essentially confirmed an account in “State of Denial,” the recently released book by the journalist Bob Woodward, that he raised the possible ouster of Mr. Rumsfeld twice — once in 2004, once earlier this year — but only as part of broader questions about staffing.

But Mr. Bush rejected the suggestions, and by the time Mr. Bolten came in, the question of Mr. Rumsfeld’s dismissal was off the table because of the generals’ revolt, said the administration officials and outside advisers. The White House spokesman Tony Snow said that Mr. Bolten had not included Mr. Rumsfeld on a list of possible changes.

Among those aides brought in to meet with the president in the late spring — as part of a broader effort under Mr. Bolten to expose Mr. Bush to more outside views — was Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, one of Mr. Rumsfeld’s louder critics. A summer of heavy violence in Iraq increased pressure on Mr. Rumsfeld from within and outside the White House. An associate of Mr. Bolten’s said that in early October, he had indicated deep concern about Mr. Rumsfeld’s tenure.

A senior administration official said that while the idea of Mr. Rumsfeld’s removal had periodically come up over the years and been shot down by Mr. Bush, “Obviously, the last month or two he was more receptive.”

The official said Mr. Bush had given his team the go-ahead to start planning for a switch and to explore the options. “He made it very clear to us two things: one, he did not want there to be any perception he was making a political decision because of the signals it sends; the second was, he wasn’t going to be comfortable with a decision or make a move unless he was comfortable with the person,” the official said.

Although Mr. Gates serves on the study panel Mr. Baker heads, administration officials said Mr. Baker was not involved in his selection, and they took issue with suggestions that somehow the first President Bush’s old team was riding to the rescue. A senior administration aide said Mr. Baker had found out about the choice minutes before it was announced.

This official said Mr. Gates’s selection came during a round of meetings in the last two months, as discussions between Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld evolved to the point where Mr. Rumsfeld had offered his resignation and Mr. Bush had finally accepted it.

On Thursday there were recriminations from some Republicans — among them Newt Gingrich — that Mr. Rumsfeld’s ouster came too late, and Republicans paid a price for it.

But officials said Mr. Bush had always planned to delay action until after the election — and to announce his decision immediately afterward, whether or not Republicans or Democrats won, to avoid the appearance he was acting in response to a drumbeat from a new Congress.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

    Removal of Rumsfeld Dates Back to Summer, NYT, 10.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/washington/10rumsfeld.html

Some opt out of military options

Updated 11/2/2006 11:42 PM ET
USA Today
By Judy Keen

LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill. — Brian Berman, a senior at Stevenson High School, doesn't want to join the military, doesn't want calls from recruiters, doesn't want them at his door.

So his parents signed a form that prevents the school from giving his contact information to recruiters. A provision of the No Child Left Behind law requires high schools to share students' names, phone numbers and addresses with military recruiters unless students or their parents choose to opt out.

Recruiters still come to school, he says, and "try to act all friendly." Berman, 18, doesn't buy their pitches about career and educational opportunities. "It's ridiculous," he says. "They're trying to bribe you to enlist."

Pentagon officials say recruiters just want the same information that goes to colleges and companies to make career pitches to students.

If Berman's parents had not signed the form, the school would be required to share his contact information with military recruiters under the 2001 law.

More than half of the nearly 4,500 students at Stevenson in this north Chicago suburb have submitted the forms. Schools that don't comply risk losing federal funds. None have so far.

Spreading the word

The Pentagon and the Education Department don't track how many students ask not to be contacted by military recruiters. Opponents of the practice are spreading the word that parents must take action if they object:

•A conference called "Education Not Militarization!" will be held Saturday in Los Angeles. Arlene Inouye, a high-school teacher and founder of the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools, says the group has members in 50 schools who make sure parents and students know their rights.

Lupe Lujan of San Gabriel, Calif., got involved in the group after her son Samuel, then 17, showed up at home a couple years ago with a military recruiter to get Samuel's Social Security card, needed to take a military aptitude test. "I was very happy to tell the recruiter, 'You're not taking my son,' " Lujan says.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill this fall that would have required schools to include an opt-out box to check on student emergency-contact cards. Some schools mail notices about opting out to parents, others send them home with students.

•Parents and peace activists in Montgomery County, Md., distributed opt-out forms to parents at back-to-school nights this fall.

•In Duluth, Minn., the Parent Teacher Student Association Council persuaded high schools to push back the deadline to turn in the forms from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1 and stepped up efforts to make parents aware of the requirement.

•The National PTA supports changing the federal law so recruiters could not approach students unless their parents "opt in" and request such contact.

Marine Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman, says the law doesn't give the military an edge over other institutions interested in giving students career choices. It requires schools to "provide military recruiters the same access that's provided to colleges and other prospective employers," he says.

Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox in Kentucky, says recruiters want to work with the schools. "The idea is to have a strong personal and professional relationship with your schools," he says.

Students who submit the opt-out forms, Smith says, aren't necessarily precluding all contact. "It means that the school isn't going to give us that student contact information," he says. "It doesn't mean the recruiter might not contact the student anyway."

Recruiters can get students' names from other sources, such as career days at schools. If a student calls a military branch's toll-free number, responds to a letter or asks for information online, recruiters can make contact, Smith says.

Juniors and seniors are the focus of recruiters from all military branches. At Stevenson, recruiters organize exercise competitions and give prizes such as key chains and T-shirts.

That doesn't bother Kris Ozga, 17, a senior. His parents didn't sign the opt-out form, and he gets calls from recruiters, even on his cellphone. "They're like, 'Oh, have you even thought about enlisting?' " he says. He did think about it, but he's pursuing a college baseball scholarship.

He didn't like some recruiters' style. "Sometimes they don't back off," he says.

Kareem Miller, 17, didn't opt out and sometimes gets three or four calls a month. "It doesn't really bother anybody," he says. "It might make people worry, though, if there's a draft."

Students recruited for years

Recruiting high-school students isn't new. Pam Polakow, whose son attended Stevenson before the law took effect in 2002, says military recruiters were "extremely persistent" when he was in school, calling at least once a week. "I was very uncomfortable," she says.

Daniel Mater, 17, a Stevenson senior, says his parents signed the form. "They made the decision, but I never had any interest in the military," he says. "It saves me time."

Senior Gino Ciarroni, 18, has been talking to recruiters from the Army, Marines and Navy. "I'm interested in serving my country," he says, "and getting help with college." He's had trouble, though, getting answers about what military job he would qualify for and how much money he'd get for college.

Recruiters gave him their cellphone numbers and seem to be "there to help," he says. He's considering joining the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

Senior Robert Warren, 17, doesn't mind the calls. "They're very respectful," he says. "When I told them I'm not interested, they stopped calling."

    Some opt out of military options, UT, 2.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-11-02-recruits_x.htm

Pentagon expands war-funding push

Fri Oct 27, 2006 9:59 PM ET
Reuters
By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department is expanding the scope of what it deems war-related spending, a move that would make it easier to meet growing Army and other service requests for more funding overall.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, in a memorandum dated Wednesday, told military chiefs to base their requests for funding outside the regular defense budget on the "longer war against terror."

Such requests should be "not strictly limited" to Iraq, Afghanistan and operations from Philippines to Djibouti sparked by the September 11 attacks, England wrote. He said they should be sent to the defense secretary's office by November 1.

The memorandum was made available Friday by InsideDefense.com, an online news service. The memo did not define the "longer war" -- a term that could open the door to more spending on everything from intelligence to the pricey process of making Army brigades more readily deployable.

Included were fix-up costs for war-worn equipment or "replacement to newer models when existing equipment is no longer available or repair economically feasible," England said.

Also included were "costs to accelerate specific force capability necessary to prosecute the war." England said the requests must be for items for which funds can be "obligated" in fiscal 2007, which began on October 1.

"Funds that cannot be obligated in FY '07 will be requested in a following supplemental," he wrote.

With passage of the fiscal 2006 supplemental spending bill, war-related appropriations would total about $436.8 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and enhanced security at military bases, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in a September 22 report.

All this is in addition to the more than $500 billion sought by President Bush in his baseline fiscal 2007 national defense request.

The Pentagon's so-called supplemental requests are not subject to restrictive caps placed by Congress on total federal discretionary spending -- the part outside of mandatory entitlements.

As a result, they may be used to shift certain costs from the annual baseline defense budget. In addition, supplemental appropriation requests do not require the kind of detailed budget justification material that Congress expects with regular Defense Department funding requests.

"What this memo appears to do is recognize the services' concerns that they need supplementals to help them cope with the shortfalls in their programs generated by the longer war on terror," said Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer from 2001 to April 2004.

Steven Kosiak, an expert on U.S. military spending at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said measures to pay for ongoing military operations were widely considered "must-pay bills, must-pass legislation" in Congress.

While Defense Department long-term budgets were projected out six years at a time each year when sent to lawmakers, supplemental war costs do not show up in any long-term spending plan, he said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a regular news briefing on Thursday, said it was "very difficult to know what ought to go in the budget and what ought to go in the supplemental."

"We've been working very hard to get 'reset' money for the Army," Rumsfeld said, using Pentagon jargon for funds to replace or refurbish combat-damaged gear. "The Army needs it. So does the Marine Corps. So do some of the other services that have reset problems."

The Army has been pushing for a $25 billion increase to its fiscal 2008 budget, but the Defense Department so far has offered only $7 billion, according to another England memo published by InsideDefense.com.

    Pentagon expands war-funding push, R, 27.10.2006,http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-10-28T015857Z_01_N27194804_RTRUKOC_0_US-ARMS-USA-BUDGET.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-politicsNews-3

Army and Other Ground Forces Meet ’06 Recruiting Goals

October 10, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — One year after the Army failed to meet its annual recruiting goal by the widest margin in two decades, the Pentagon is to announce this week that the ground forces, and the rest of the military, all reached their targets for recruits in 2006.

Weakness remained in filling the reserves, however. The Marine and Air Force Reserves topped 100 percent of their goals, although the Army National Guard hit 99 percent of its target.

For active-duty forces, the Army signed up 80,635 people in the 2006 fiscal year, which ended at midnight on Sept. 30, topping its goal of 80,000. The Navy recruited 36,679, after setting a goal of 36,656. The Marines enlisted 32,337, with a goal of 32,301, and the Air Force recruited 30,889, topping its goal of 30,750.

“The big question out there is, ‘How did you guys do better in ’06 if you fell short in ’05?’ ” the top Pentagon personnel officer, David S. C. Chu, said. “And yet we have a very demanding set of deployments going on overseas. And, if anything, the nation is more debating this issue of war against terrorism and our deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan than was true in 2005.”

Cash bonuses are often cited as the primary incentive for recruits, and Pentagon statistics indicate that two-thirds of those who sign up receive bonuses. Mr. Chu noted that successes occurred in a strong economy.

“Opportunities for young people have gotten better and better,” he said. “They are choosier.”

To encourage national service and the choice of a military career, additional recruiters were hired last year. Mr. Chu said the real challenge for the Defense Department was persuading adult “influencers” like parents and school counselors to advocate, or at least support, military service by young Americans.

“If we don’t deal with this influencer issue successfully, we will have very difficult challenges ahead of us,” he said.

Some efforts to reach recruiting goals brought criticism, especially Army decisions to raise recruits’ maximum allowable age and to accept a larger percentage of applicants scoring at the lowest acceptable range on a standardized aptitude examination.

The Army also offered large bonuses to recruits signing up for particularly dangerous assignments, including up to $40,000 for soldiers willing to drive convoy trucks in Iraq.

The active-duty Army recruiting goal of 80,000 was the same target as in 2005, a year in which the service fell short of enlistments for the first time since 1999.

Across the reserve component, the Air Force Reserve recruited 6,989 people, well over its goal of 6,607, and the Marine Corps Reserve topped its goal of 8,024 by signing up 8,056. The Air National Guard reached 97 percent of its goal, signing up 9,138 people, beneath a target of 9,380, and the Navy reserve attracted 9,722 people, just 87 percent of its goal of 11,180.

Officials paid particular attention to the Army National Guard members, who may be mobilized for service in war zones as well as for national emergencies, and for the Army Reserve.

The Army National Guard approached its goal of 70,000 by recruiting 69,042, while the Army Reserve hit 95 percent of its goal, recruiting 34,379 of a goal of 36,032.

On retaining military personnel, Mr. Chu said, “People who have elected to join the military are willing, despite the burdens we have asked them to bear, to continue serving.”

The Army, Air Force and Marines exceeded their retention goals, the Pentagon said. Lt. Gen. Robert L. van Antwerp Jr., commander of the Army Accessions Command, responsible for recruiting and initial training, said the Army had “defied the odds” by meeting its active-duty recruiting goals in the 2006 fiscal year as civilian jobs have been more plentiful across the nation.

In an interview at his headquarters at Fort Monroe, Va., General van Antwerp described how the Army hired 1,000 recruiters, swelling their ranks to 6,500. The Army college fund remains a big draw, he added.

The Army has been criticized for raising the allowable age for recruits to 42, from 35. General van Antwerp said no more than 500 new soldiers were in that category.

The Army also raised the limit on the percentage admitted into the service from the lower aptitude ranking, increasing the percentage to the Defense Department limit of 4 percent of recruits from 2 percent.

General van Antwerp said the decision allowed the acceptance of some otherwise qualified recruits whose deficiency was in English-language skills, not mental aptitude.

Some recruits also signed up after the Army waived criminal records that would have previously barred them. The Army said waivers would not be granted in cases of a pattern of offenses, as well as for people convicted of drug trafficking and sexual crimes.

Pentagon personnel officers and Army officials said a continuing focus and new ideas would be needed to meet the recruiting targets.

One idea under consideration is to offer a signing bonus that could be used solely for a down payment on a house, a feature that Army officials say would appeal to parents of potential recruits more than the unrestricted bonuses that new soldiers might spend on items like stereo systems or motorcycles.

The Army also announced a new advertising slogan. “Army Strong” replaces the previous motto, “An Army of One.”

    Army and Other Ground Forces Meet ’06 Recruiting Goals, NYT, 10.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/us/10recruit.html?hp&ex=1160539200&en=8275cd59b8a22e0b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Aircraft Carrier Is the Bushes’ Latest Namesake

October 8, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., Oct. 7 — It was a rare and poignant moment, one that moved President Bush to tears.

Not the current President Bush, but the first, who was joined Saturday at a shipyard here by dozens of political luminaries and his extended clan — including the son he calls “the president” — to christen a Navy aircraft carrier bearing his name.

The christening of the George H. W. Bush, the latest and last in the Navy’s line of Nimitz aircraft carriers, took place under rainy skies, punctuated by thunderbolts so sharp that at one point, the elder Mr. Bush interrupted his speech, looked skyward and said: “I’m finishing, Lord! I’m finishing!” He seemed to burst with pride as he pronounced the occasion “any naval aviator’s dream come true.”

Though it was a day mostly of reminiscences for the 41st president of the United States, who joined the Navy fresh out of high school and became a decorated pilot in World War II, the elder Mr. Bush also took the occasion to do something he does not often do: comment on the administration of the 43rd president.

“I am very proud of our president,” the 82-year-old father said forcefully of his son. “I support him in every single way with every fiber in my body.”

The scene was an unusual tableau, both political and personal, for the two Bushes, whose aides have been at odds, and not always beneath the surface, over the war in Iraq.

The audience included some who served both 41 and 43, as the presidential pair are known. Colin L. Powell and James A. Baker III, former secretaries of state, were there, as was Andrew H. Card Jr., who served as transportation secretary for the first President Bush and is the former chief of staff to the second.

But it was also a family reunion for America’s current ruling political dynasty. On the stage sat two presidents, two first ladies and a governor, all named Bush. Mr. Card, who was invited to join the current president aboard Air Force One for the trip, described it in deeply personal terms, saying the elder Mr. Bush was like a father to him, the current president like a brother.

“The president is going there not only as the president and commander in chief,” Mr. Card said. “He’s going there as a very proud son.”

Built at the Northrop Grumman naval shipyard here, the George H. W. Bush will not be ready to sail until 2008. Its hulking frame — 1,100 feet long, with a 4.5-acre flight deck — was festooned with red, white and blue bunting, a picture of the elder Mr. Bush attached to its bow.

The current president’s sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, who has just published a biography of the elder Mr. Bush titled “My Father, My President,” performed the christening honors, whacking a bottle of sparkling wine across the hull as her father and brother looked on.

President Bush introduced “our dad,” recounting his father’s flying career. His speech touched on light moments, like the time his father was reprimanded for flying too low over a circus (“I was grounded for causing an elephant stampede,” he quoted the elder Mr. Bush as saying), and on somber ones, among them the shooting down of his father’s plane. Two crew members died; the elder Mr. Bush earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.

But it was the first President Bush, his step a tad slower than in years gone by, his voice a tad shakier, who stole the show. He held hands with his wife, Barbara, belted out the words to “God Bless America” and happily patted his son on the shoulder. In his speech, he grew tearful as he described his duties as a young officer whose job included censoring the mail sent by shipmates.

“I learned a lot about human nature, and I learned a lot about the hearts and dreams of these kids,” the elder Mr. Bush said, looking down in an effort to collect himself. He stopped for more than a few seconds, then continued in a throaty voice, “I would see these letters written, and I would count my own blessings.”

    Aircraft Carrier Is the Bushes’ Latest Namesake, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/us/08bush.html

Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget

October 8, 2006
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is allowing the Army to approach White House budget officials by itself to argue for substantial increases in resources, a significant divergence from initial plans by Mr. Rumsfeld and his inner circle to cut the Army to pay for new technology and a new way of war.

With its troops and equipment worn down by years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army appears likely to receive a significant spike in its share of the Pentagon’s budget request when it goes to Congress early next year. Significantly, increases to the size of the Army made by Congress since 2001, amounting to 30,000 troops, have become a permanent fixture of the force, military and Congressional officials say.

Beyond that, the Army is discussing internally whether it should expand by tens of thousands more, as some in Congress have long advocated. This time, Mr. Rumsfeld is not standing in the way. His original vision for a transformed military called for leaner, more agile forces capitalizing on the latest technological innovations.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s current acquiescence is viewed within the Pentagon as reflecting both the reality of the Army’s needs to increase its size and repair or replace current equipment and a decision not to cross swords with the service — or with the Army’s staunchest supporters in Congress. Some of them are sharply critical of the defense secretary’s management of the war effort and have called for him to step aside.

But Mr. Rumsfeld is requiring the Army to make its own case. The defense secretary has broken Pentagon precedent by allowing the Army to make its financial case directly to the president’s Office of Management and Budget, a task normally managed by the defense secretary and his staff rather than by the individual military services. The Air Force and the Navy also asked to present their budgets directly to the budget agency and the requests were granted.

The federal government is at the point in the budget process where departments are building their budget requests, with the Office of Management and Budget overseeing the effort.

Pentagon officials said the Army was seeking about $138 billion for the next fiscal year, compared with its $112 billion request last year. Army officials told Congress that the service was already $50 billion short in equipment when terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would require $17.1 billion in extra spending for 2007 just to repair and replace tanks, Humvees and other gear. Money to repair and replace equipment is expected to be $13 billion in 2008 and the next five years.

As negotiations in the Defense Department and with the Office of Management and Budget got under way to build the 2008 budget proposal, which the White House is due to submit to Congress in February, the Army took the unusual step of ignoring a deadline for submitting its central budget document, which the armed services use to explain their missions and resource requests.

“This is unusual, but we are in unusual times,” a senior Defense Department official said. The official, who said the missions assigned to the armed forces were larger than those envisioned in official Pentagon strategy and far outstrip what can be supported by current budgets, described the conundrum Mr. Rumsfeld and the Army face.

“Do we lower our strategy, or do we raise our resources?” said the official, who was given anonymity to discuss budget deliberations. “That’s where we’re at.”

Army officers made the case that meeting the administration’s internal preset deadline for budget proposals before the service had fully assessed its needs — and made the case for a substantial increase — would create a false debate over numbers that would have to be dramatically revised before the February deadline for the administration’s public budget submission to Congress.

Even with additional money and more troops, it is far from clear that the Army will be able in the near term to fulfill all of its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, prepare for other contingencies and keep its pledge to active-duty soldiers to give them two years at home between yearlong deployments to the war zone. Some senior Army officials are said to be advocating a growth not just of 30,000 soldiers, but of 60,000 to 80,000, and it is likely that sustained troop levels in Iraq may require a sizable recall of the National Guard to fill out future deployments there.

Steven Kosiak, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent group that monitors defense policy, said previous budget plans looking ahead to 2011 gave the Army about 25 percent of the defense budget, roughly the same level it has received for decades.

But by pushing for a substantial increase in 2008 and for years thereafter, the Army is saying it needs a bigger share to deal with the requirements of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, possible future wars and the need to modernize its force.

Unlike the Air Force and the Navy, which have been cutting their total personnel substantially to save money that can be applied to operations and new weapons systems, the Army is being forced to increase its total numbers, drawing from money for overhauling equipment and for new weapons systems.

The Air Force and Navy also have substantial mission requirements that cannot be ignored, so eventually, the question will be whether or by how much the Pentagon budget should be allowed to grow to meet the Army’s rising needs.

Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy research group in Virginia, noted that the military budget was on the verge of exceeding a half trillion dollars a year, a level that, based on inflation-adjusted dollars, has been reached only three times before. Each previous time the budget reached that level, after the wars in Korea and Vietnam and after the defense buildup in the 1980’s, it soon went back down.

“The question is, Are we going to break that glass ceiling this time?” Mr. Thompson said. “The future is unknowable, but I would say probably not.”

Mr. Rumsfeld has come around to the Army’s position of needing more money after a series of meetings and briefings with senior officers.

“The secretary said: ‘Prove your case. Show me the metrics,’ ” a member of Mr. Rumsfeld’s policy staff said. “The Army came in and showed him their metrics and proved their case. That’s when Rumsfeld said, ‘O.K. Now go over to O.M.B. and talk to them.’ ”

Mr. Rumsfeld has not publicly addressed his reasons for allowing this tactic, although it is a no-cost decision for the defense secretary, one that allows an important yet thorny issue to be raised with the White House without any specific personal commitment from him at this early stage of the debate.

Some Pentagon officials are frustrated that the Army is arguing for increases to pay for current missions even as it resists calls to cut its own $130 billion, 10-year investment in a next-generation weapons program called Future Combat Systems. Others express concern that the Army is using its current resources inefficiently.

Rumsfeld supporters say the continued financing of Future Combat Systems illustrates how his agenda to use technology to overhaul the Army is still being pursued. Some of the additional money the Army is seeking would go toward another part of his plan, realigning the infantry divisions into more deployable brigades.

Mr. Rumsfeld has opposed proposals to increase the size of the military, citing the need to contain health benefits and other personnel costs that have been eating a larger share of the defense budget.

Congress authorized a 30,000-soldier increase in the active-duty Army after the Sept. 11 attacks that was described as a temporary measure. Army officials say they hope to reach the authorized total troop strength of 512,000 by next year.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the Army’s top personnel officer, said that number was being treated as a “permanent floor.”

In an interview, General Rochelle called that level “adequate” and said the Army “is growing the force as quickly as we can to get to that.”

Inside the Pentagon, officials both in the Army and in Mr. Rumsfeld’s inner circle go out of their way to describe a consultative relationship between the defense secretary and senior officers. The tenor, they said, is far more constructive than it was before Mr. Rumsfeld called a retired four-star officer, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, from his Rocky Mountain ranch to become the Army chief of staff and rebuild relations.

General Schoomaker, in his final year as chief, now finds himself negotiating with a strong hand as the Army carries the lion’s share of the mission in Iraq.

    Rumsfeld Shift Lets Army Seek Larger Budget, NYT, 8.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/washington/08army.html?hp&ex=1160366400&en=6dbf279bdb7d7ef5&ei=5094&partner=homepage