Repub support for Rummy fits in with the Bush's reward failure policy

[ProSense]

Army extends cost-cutting, despite emergency funding bill

By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, July 22, 2006

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The Army has more than 100,000 soldiers deployed to Iraq, plus responsibility for logistic support for itself and its sister services. It also equips, trains and supports the Iraqi security forces.

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Belt-tightening measures that will stay in place include:

Limiting supply purchases to critical wartime needs only

Cancellation and/or postponement of all non-mission-essential travel

Stopping shipment of goods, unless necessary to support deployed units or those preparing to deploy

A hiring freeze on new civilians, except for new interns and lateral moves/promotions of current employees

Releasing temporary employees (who will not be hired back even with receipt of supplemental funding)

A freeze on all new contract awards and all new task orders on existing contracts

Restrictions on the use of government credit cards

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Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said July 14 that in 2004 it cost $4 billion to repair or replace war equipment, but now it has reached $12 billion to $13 billion. “And in my view, we will continue to see this escalate,” he told a Defense Forum Foundation roundtable on the Army’s role on the war on terror in Washington. The Army is using up equipment at four times the rate for which it was designed, he added.

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The Army chief said there is too little money available to keep up with equipment repairs. He said the Army’s five major repair depots are operating at only 50 percent of capacity, resulting in a backlog of 1,000 Humvees awaiting attention at the Red River Army Depot in Texas and 500 tanks at a depot in Alabama. The Army’s 2006 budget is $98.2 billion, and the 2007 budget request not yet approved by Congress seeks $111 billion for the Army.

www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=38797

Strapped for money, Army extends cutbacks

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Thursday, July 20th, 2006 02:31 PM (PDT)

Related Information
Defense Department
U.S. Army
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Army, bearing most of the cost for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Thursday its money crunch has gotten so bad it is clamping down on spending for travel, civilian hiring and other expenses not essential to the war mission.

A statement outlining the cutbacks did not say how much money the Army expects to save, but senior officials have said the cost of replacing worn equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan is rising at a quickening pace.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said last week that in 2004 it cost $4 billion to repair or replace war equipment, but now it has reached $12 billion to $13 billion. "And in my view, we will continue to see this escalate," he said, adding that the Army is using up equipment at four times the rate for which it was designed.

Schoomaker traced the problem's origin to entering the Iraq war in 2003 with a $56 billion shortfall in equipment. The Army managed the situation by rotating in fresh units while keeping the same equipment in Iraq. Over time, he said, the equipment has worn out without sufficient investment in replacements.

The Army chief said there is too little money available to keep up with equipment repairs. He said the Army's five major repair depots are operating at only 50 percent of capacity, resulting in a backlog of 1,000 Humvee utility vehicles awaiting attention at the Red River Army Depot in Texas and 500 tanks at a depot in Alabama.

The Army's 2006 budget is $98.2 billion, and the 2007 budget request not yet approved by Congress seeks $111 billion for the Army.

more...

http://www.thenewstribune.com/24hour/iraq/story/3334302p-12278818c.html

Tanker Inquiry Finds Rumsfeld's Attention Was Elsewhere

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; A15

The topic was the largest defense procurement scandal in recent decades, and the two investigators for the Pentagon's inspector general in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's office on April 1, 2005, asked the secretary to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth.

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It was a bumpy start to an odd interview, as Rumsfeld cited poor memory, loose office procedures, and a general distraction with "the wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan to explain why he was unsure how his department came to nearly squander $30 billion leasing several hundred new tanker aircraft that its own experts had decided were not needed.

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But a copy of the transcript, obtained recently by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act after a year-long wait, says a lot about how little of Rumsfeld's attention has been focused on weapons-buying -- a function that consumes nearly a fifth of the $410 billion defense budget, exclusive of expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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The tanker procurement scandal is the poster child for these problems. The Air Force in 2004 canceled its plan to lease the tankers from the Boeing Co., amid allegations of improper collusion with the company. Former Air Force procurement officer Darleen A. Druyun and one of the interlocutors at Boeing were sent to prison; subsequent investigations showed that Druyun manipulated other large Air Force contracts to benefit military contractors.

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But the scandal never tarnished Rumsfeld, and in the previously undisclosed interview, conducted with principal Deputy General Counsel Daniel J. Dell'Orto at his side, the defense secretary makes clear that he does wars, not defense procurement. As a result, he could not recollect details of what subordinates told him about the tanker lease or what he said to them.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901090.html?nav=rss_business/government

That reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld’s amateurish approach to war planning. "Here may be the clearest manifestation of OSD’s contempt for the accumulated wisdom of the military profession and of the assumption among forward thinkers that technology—above all information technology—has rendered obsolete the conventions traditionally governing the preparation and conduct of war," commented retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, a former commander of an armored cavalry regiment. "To imagine that PowerPoint slides can substitute for such means is really the height of recklessness." It was like telling an automobile mechanic to use a manufacturer’s glossy sales brochure to figure out how to repair an engine.

"As you know, you have to go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want." – Donald Rumsfeld, the man who ‘Served Up Our Great Military A Huge Bowl of Chicken Feces’

Today in the news:

Afghanistan: 3 UK soldiers killed

Three British soldiers killed, eight seriously injured in Afghanistan

Afghan casualty rate worse than Iraq as three more Britons die

[babylonsister]

1. Thanks, ProSense, for continuing to educate us! Nom! nt

[ProSense]

2. Of course the Repubs are trying to have it both ways

09/7/06 - Posted from the Daily Record newsroom

Former president stumps for Kean, talks ethics

BRIDGEWATER -- It probably wasn't the most opportune time for former President George H.W. Bush to drop into New Jersey to campaign for Thomas H. Kean Jr.

After all, just last week Kean, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez, had criticized how the current president, George W. Bush, is conducting military operations in Iraq. Kean said he wasn't satisfied with how the war was going and he said that Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, should be replaced.

http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060907/COLUMNISTS01/609070368

Ethics?

Kean family values on 9/11:

Ben-Veniste rips ABC’s fakeumentary over inaccuracies