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FROM THE EDITOR:

A Bipartisan Inquest into 9-11 Is Essential to Victory

By Ed Offley

The big headlines in the war on terrorism are becoming rare.

As the weeks and months have passed since the stunning 9-11 terrorist strikes and the U.S.-led counteroffensive in Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban movement and scattered al Qaeda fighters into the mountains, we have seen a diffusion of events and news reports that may seem disheartening but, in reality, merely reflect the reality of a sustained, global campaign.

But one event occurred last week that should have received much more attention - and a much larger headline - than it did: The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, on a unanimous vote, approved the formation of an investigative commission with sweeping powers to probe the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to identify what structural or procedural flaws in the U.S. government that may have enabled the hijackers and their shadowy planners in al Qaeda to carry out the deadly hijackings.

Nine Democrats and eight Republicans on the committee, chaired by Connecticut Democrat Sen. Joseph Lieberman, voted to send to the Senate floor legislation to create a bipartisan, independent investigative commission that Lieberman had co-sponsored with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and fellow Democrat Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey.

Assuming its passage in the Senate, the measure will require similar approval by the full House of Representatives before going to President George W. Bush for his signature.

What is heartening about this committee vote is not merely the fact that Democrats and Republicans ceased their eternal political sniping to agree on a bill, but that the goal of the proposed commission - an unvarnished and comprehensive inquest into the 9-11 attacks - is of extreme importance to the future security of the nation.

When the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, their actions propelled the United States into a global war. Most Americans quickly realized our nation's survival and continuing freedoms would be jeopardized if we came out of that conflict short of total victory. So too, it is heartening to see that the vast majority of Americans today recognize that the war in which we are now fighting is indeed a long-term struggle, that there will be setbacks as well as victories, but that in the end there is no acceptable alternative but victory.

But national unity alone is not enough.

There were multiple inquests into the Pearl Harbor attack (including two separate, flawed military probes by the Navy and Army, and a major set of hearings by the Senate) that ran even as the United States prosecuted the war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. While the issue of communications security and the highly-classified issue of our success in breaking the Japanese and German codes prior to the war remained secret for many years, the final result of the Pearl Harbor inquests did succeed in identifying a set of organizational flaws and procedural errors that had enabled the Japanese to carry out the sneak attack in Hawaii.

The legacy - not of the war but of the investigations into how Pearl Harbor had happened - led, in 1947, to the passage of the National Security Act reorganization of the U.S. military and intelligence establishment. While the massive reorganization did not cure every ailment - particularly the vicious and paralyzing culture of inter-service rivalry within the armed forces - the reforms did mark a major milestone of how the hard and bitter "lessons learned" from Pearl Harbor were used to reshape our national security organization in the years after World War II.

The United States today is in grave need of an equally serious inquest into why the 9-11 terrorist attacks occurred and how the U.S. government's current organization may have facilitated such devastation on our homeland.

The Lieberman-McCain commission, as proposed, will consist of 14 prominent citizens - not White House aides or congressional staffers - appointed 50-50 along party lines and excluding anyone currently serving in government. The panel will be given the means to conduct an in-depth investigation into the terror attacks and any area of government it determines necessary. The legislation calls for a review of "any relevant legislation, executive order, regulation, plan, practice or procedure" in connection with the 9-11 attacks, and will be charged with recommending the reorganizing of governmental agencies and their operating regulations, according to a committee spokeswoman.

The root adjectives to describe this effort are bipartisan, independent and unlimited.

Barring an outbreak of short-sighted political partisanship in Congress, or worse - an out-of-character case of cold feet by the Bush White House - the chances appear good that the Lieberman-McCain proposal will become law.

Those who argue that such an inquest will hobble our ongoing war on terrorism, by distracting the nation's leaders and diverting governmental agencies from the fight, are dead wrong: The goal of the legislation is to determine the hard truths that will allow us to make the decisions - many of them politically controversial - that will make victory in the war against terrorism come sooner and with a lower loss of life.

Congress, please pass this legislation. Mr. President, please sign it.

Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at defensewatch@aol.com.

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Hack's Target For The Week:

Poster-Boy Losers

By David H. Hackworth

Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the guy who saved our nation during the Civil War, probably wouldn't make major in today's Army. He was mule-skinner abrasive, enjoyed his sauce and wasn't exactly what you'd call a pretty face.

Today most generals and admirals are highly attractive smooth talkers with some sort of master's degree and a Ph.D. in how to work the corridors of power.

But while these uniformed central-casting smoothies know how to schmooze for funds for their latest silver-bullet project, they unfortunately don't know how to fight guerrilla wars.

The Somali debacle and now the recent major foul-up in Afghanistan prove in spades that our warrior class has lost out to a professional-management culture that's virtually destroyed our armed forces, less the Marine Corps -- which is slowly veering in that direction as well.

Long before the first regular American soldier headed to Vietnam, the hardened vets who'd slugged it out on hundreds of killing fields knew the post-World War II ticket-punching personnel system was on its way toward destroying the leadership needed to win America's future wars.

Going, going, gone were the days when lieutenants like Frank Gunn stayed with a regiment from the first shot of the war until the last. Gunn led a platoon and company in Africa, was a major by '43 in Sicily, skippered a battalion in France the next year and by the end of the war, at the ripe old age of 24, was commanding the storied 39th Regiment fighting across Germany. General Gunn, now retired, became skilled at his trade down in the mud with the soldiers he loved and would have died for -- and they in turn followed him to hell and back. Gunn never got caught up in the type of career management that produced the current lot of Perfumed Princes. He learned to soldier by listening to his old sergeants and being with the troops.

In Vietnam, officer leaders were churned out almost as quickly as customers at Starbucks. Ticket-punching was in, and leading from the front was out. The Washington personnel chiefs' agenda was to use the war as a training vehicle for officers so they'd have blooded leadership when the big fight with the Soviets exploded.

Post-Vietnam studies concluded ticket-punching was a major cause for our failure, and that the personnel system desperately needed surgery. But nothing was done, and over the years the cancerous system disabled our senior officer corps and is now infecting our proud NCOs. Their foremost concern always used to be for the welfare of their troops and how sharply their unit was trained, not what kind of rating they got on a report. My First Sergeant in Italy took great pride in showing us 'cruits the chain scars from his time in a Georgia prison. But with his fifth-grade education, the old Top could still run a lean-and-mean company of soldiers.

Afghanistan was going just fine while the old-pro Special Forces sergeants, chiefs and captains were running the fight. But when Perfumed Princes like Maj. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck -- with his M.S. degree in exercise physiology (but no combat experience) and Pentagon punches such as director for politico-military affairs for global and multilateral issues (I kid you not) under his shiny general's belt -- took over the fighting with the conventional, non-mountain-trained 10th Division, our Army came away with that Vietnam Heartbreak Ridge look: high body count without many bodies and too many friendly casualties.

A fine sergeant in Kuwait says it all: "My generals worry about what kind of engraved Buck knives to buy to give as gifts to the foreign generals, do we have enough potpourri-scented Pledge to make sure our mahogany desks are dust-free, color ink for our laser printers, oh and let's not forget the staffers have to eat better than the rest of the Army, so we have to plan at least one big dinner function so the fat cats can get fatter. I've seen these generals cancel a visit to troops training in the desert so they could drink coffee and have lunch with another general visiting from the War College. Where are their damn priorities?"

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831.

© 2002 David H. Hackworth

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ARTICLE 01

American Soldiers Aren't Worth Much

By: J. David Galland

Dear Mrs. Gaffney and children, we regret to inform you that Daddy's not coming home, he is dead. "You will receive full serviceman's group life insurance benefits in the amount of ten thousand dollars," said the telegram. In about a month your husband should be home for proper interment. You will get a flag!

That was the message that the twenty-two year old Mrs. James Gaffney received on the first day of November in 1969. In the company of her two children, James Junior and little Lauren, the children were two years and seven months respectively; her world and her life froze in time.

She immediately thought there may be a mistake, James' last letter, received only two days ago, assured her that he would be home for Christmas. James had been with the 9th Infantry, down in the Mekong Delta since just before Christmas, the year prior.

Lauren never knew her Daddy; the closest she came was a few old photos taken at some beach in New Jersey, a memory; cracked, withered with time, and fading. Yet, the pictures suddenly became cherished mementos to her mother. James Junior knew Daddy, but he can't remember now.

Both of the children were raised without a father. Their mother, seemingly well provided for following their father's death in Vietnam, the ten thousand dollars did not go all that far. Linda reflects back now, a mother herself, thirty-two years later. She remembers that her mom struggled constantly, always working two or three jobs, one at that Dunkin Donuts that left her sprinkled with flour and exhausted. She always wondered what it would have been like to have a father.

Jim Gaffney was a solid soldier, after two years of college, a young family and the need to provide for them all, he went to work for a construction company. After dropping out of college, Jim hoped that losing his draft deferment would not be noticed in early 1968. Reality, however, finally came knocking. Jim eventually got the call and he responded the way he was raised, living up to his responsibility to defend his country, politics notwithstanding. He moved quickly and enlisted for a career field of preference, which was to be a medical specialist.

SP4 Jim Gaffney almost made it through his tour in Vietnam, down in the muddy, nasty, challenging Mekong Delta as a combat medic. By the time he considered himself "short" he frequently reflected back on the scores of soldiers he had helped, and saved from death with his skills and a lot of luck. He often grew quiet and withdrawn when the memories of too many young men whom he could not help, or who left this world as he worked to keep them in it, came to visit time after time. Crouching in reeking water, brown with the residue of war and colored with the leaky fuel needed to move the combatants to the fray, SP4 Gaffney's body wretched with what he thought to be amebic dysentery. A bout earlier in the year hospitalized him up at Third Field Hospital in Saigon. The paregoric that they fed him kept him in a state of opiate nirvana. He did not have time for a replay; it was almost time to go home.

Jim had worked diligently to clear up the numerous skin infections left by constantly hitchhiking leaches. He looked forward to home, with nothing to worry about from critters except an occasional mosquito bite. Ironically enough, it was a mosquito that had dealt Jim the blow that slowed him down this day. He was acutely ill with falciparum malaria, accompanied with all of its most severe symptoms, wallowing in a semi delusional sickened existence. Jim didn't pay it much notice. A few days without sleep often left him feeling this way.

Jim paused there in the brine, content in thought of autumn on the east coast, back in the world. For a few seconds, as though far away, he could smell dry leaves smoldering in the late afternoon air, behind Mrs. Mallon's house as the fleeting daylight gave way to the fall evening chill. He waved to Jackie, the paperboy, making his semi nocturnal final deliveries. Jim wanted to earn money as a paperboy when he was older.

A special time indeed, he remembered Halloween as a child; trick or treat, the parties at school, and the bobbing for apples and the cider, the snapping of dry tinder in the fireplace, dressing up to look menacing, and making a candy haul equivalent to a pirate's booty. Alas, only to have it seized by his mother and rationed like gold dust, until what he thought was still a half full bag, suddenly disappeared.

He thought of the red hula hoop that he had as a child and how he wished he could just stand straight up in this rice paddy and swing that damned hula hoop around his mid section, right there in the stinking rice paddy. Tired of being wet and cold, the young man fantasized about maybe flinging a skyward finger toward the reason that he was in such a rotten place in this world, perhaps while spinning the hoop, he laughed at the irony of it all.

The trembling and quaking from deep within his stomach drew Jim back to reality. His whole body hurt like hell, he vomited again. Trying to wade forward so as not remain in what he had just expelled from his stomach, Jim laughed at the uselessness of the effort. Feeling defeated, he was content to resign himself to his presence in the swill that had largely been his home for a year, the Mekong delta. Jim wondered if the skin would ever grow back on his legs and feet, and then he was dead.

While advancing, through an early morning fog obscured rice paddy, Jim's company had hoped to surprise a small contingent of Viet Cong and catch them unaware. Not so, however as they neared, the company thought they had them where they wanted them, until a wall of small arms, Rocket Propelled Grenades, and automatic weapons fire cut them to ribbons.

The enemy hugged the belt, outnumbered they intentionally let the Americans maneuver right up to their positions. So close, that for the Americans to call on tactical air and artillery, it would mean their own death.

Too many good young American men died, one is too many, but it was a massive and murderous ambush that took its toll. There was no escape other than that which met Jim. He was going home.

Mrs. James Gaffney telephoned me last week. She conveyed that both James Junior and Lauren were well, as was she. "But it is just not fair she said, why do soldiers and their families get treated like this?"

She was far past crying, she was bitter. I listened without breathing; she had not visited the loss of her husband, with me, for many years. I wondered what brought this on again, and I inwardly feared the answer. The questions in my mind remained un-asked, but I trusted that they would be answered, without an utterance on my part.

"My neighbor lost her husband at the World Trade Center. He had stopped to get a cup of coffee". With a collective sigh, "my neighbor is going to receive 1.8 million dollars", voiced Mrs. Gaffney.

I asked her myself, "Why, do soldiers and their families get treated like this, in America"?

J. David Galland, Deputy Editor of DefenseWatch, is a retired veteran of over thirty years of service in military intelligence who resides in Germany. He can be reached at defensewatch02@yahoo.com.

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ARTICLE 02

Training by Leadership, not Committee

By Matthew Dodd

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's efforts to break the Defense Department's bureaucratic and institutionally protective status quo mindset to transform U.S. military capabilities are failing, based on the March 1, 2002 Strategic Plan for Transforming DOD Training. This 24-page document totally ignores the biggest problem (and greatest transformation inhibitor) with joint training today - the lack of effective supervision, from the writing of joint training doctrine through the conduct of joint training.

From a strictly military training perspective, current joint training doctrine is probably some of the best joint doctrine ever written. The Joint Training System (JTS), initiated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) in 1994, offers an integrated warfighting requirements-based way to align training programs with assigned missions consistent, with command priorities and resources. The system is guided by five principles: focusing on the warfighting mission, training as you will fight, using commanders as primary trainers, applying joint doctrine, and centralizing planning while decentralizing execution. The four cyclical phases of the JTS are identifying requisite capabilities based on assigned missions, event planning, executing training, and assessing the training's effectiveness.

Unfortunately, the JTS fails to factor in obvious joint training challenges that include, but are not limited to: regional theater engagement requirements, the services' long-range scheduling of rotational in-theater service component units, the non-synchronized personnel turnover rates of service component headquarters staffs, and the wide disparity in training capabilities and proficiencies between U.S. forces and our allied and coalition training partners. The JTS failure to reflect these factors makes it impossible for commands' joint training realities to conform to joint training doctrine.

Where is the effective leadership and supervision needed to either ensure compliance with the JTS, or to identify the challenges to complying with the JTS and either eliminate those challenges or re-write the JTS to make it more realistic and easier to execute? Ironically, this plan even includes a quote from Secretary Rumsfeld that captures this leadership and supervision failure relative to the JTS: "… We need to train like we fight and fight like we train and, too often, we don't." For this strategic plan on training transformation to not focus on the Secretary's quote and ask "Why?" is inexcusable.

Let me share with you some strategic plan excerpts and their inherent shortfalls…

"The training concepts outlined in this plan are significantly different from those used to conduct training today. The approach emphasizes the mission requirements of the combatant commanders-the CINC is the customer." I see nothing "significantly different" here, unless this plan is actually trying to expose the CINCs' unrealistic and unproductive attempts to balance their competing warfighting mission and theater engagement requirements with their available forces and resources.

"Lessons learned will be captured and incorporated into future joint training and operations…Ensure that joint experimentation and lessons-learned are routinely integrated into the development of new training processes and systems." These simple, logical goals have to overcome years of inertia according to a 1995 General Accounting Office training study, which found that "CINC officials said that they seldom test whether prior problems have been corrected in their exercises because (1) the Joint Staff has not required them to do so and (2) they had insufficient time to analyze past problems before planning future exercises. One CINC training official stated that joint exercises consist merely of accomplishing events rather than training and that problems identified during prior exercises may be "lessons recorded" but not necessarily "lessons learned.""

"The benefits of investing in Training Transformation will be far reaching and will form the foundation that will enable the attainment of the Department's broader Transformation objectives. As the key enabler of the Department's other Transformation efforts, Training Transformation must set the direction and pace for large-scale organizational, cultural, and technological change." Training transformation's direction appears to be reinforcing the status quo by not recommending a fundamental, and no doubt unpopular and controversial, empowerment of oversight responsibility for joint training. The pace set by this training transformation plan is snail-like and fails to inspire any sense of urgency. If this document is THE key enabler of large-scale organizational, cultural, and technological change, then DoD's transformation efforts seem destined to fail.

"The CJCS, working with the CINCs and Services, will develop an initial set of joint core competencies. The CJCS and Services will coordinate to ensure service core competencies are linked to the joint core competencies. The Joint Training System (JTS) will be updated to incorporate and focus training on these new core competencies. In addition, the Joint Training System should be fully implemented, to include expanding the Joint Training System Specialist Program, into all combatant command staffs as well as combat support agency staffs." Updating and adding to the JTS is not the answer. What good is it to make the JTS even more complicated when it is not even properly executed now?

"The CJCS, working with the [Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness] USD (P&R) and the Services, will establish requirements for the Services to track the joint education and training qualifications and joint operational experiences of military personnel. The Services will develop or adjust their personnel and training systems to meet the requirements... Systems that routinely track personnel with "joint" training qualifications and experiences will improve strategic human resource planning and management…Train individuals (military and civilian) to new joint standards prior to arrival at joint duty; and ensure that personnel systems uniformly define and can routinely track joint training qualifications and experiences, and use them to select qualified personnel for joint assignments." Service personnel systems are still far from perfect in ensuring qualified personnel are assigned to their own service billets. I do not understand how CJCS joint requirements will persuade the services to develop or adjust their personnel systems when there is little to no benefit to the services.

This plan proclaims that it is predicated on certain well-established and inter-related responsibilities. The Service Secretaries organize, train, and equip their forces for use by the combatant commanders. The CJCS develops joint doctrine and formulates joint training and education policies. A combatant commander has authoritative direction over all aspects of military operations and joint training for assigned forces, and is directly responsible to the Secretary of Defense for the preparedness of his command to carry out missions assigned to the command.

"The Training Transformation Executive Steering Group [made up of 4-star level representatives] and the Training Transformation Senior Advisory Group [made up of 2-3 star level representatives] have been responsible for overseeing the development of this Strategic Plan for Transforming DoD Training. These two governing bodies will also be responsible for overseeing the resolution of the [outstanding training] issues, and managing the "living" Training Transformation process for the Department. In this regard, they will be responsible to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense for the development of a Training Transformation Implementation Plan and for overseeing Training Transformation implementation." In other words, an ad hoc committee of non-permanent billet holders wrote this plan. Two senior ad hoc committees of non-permanent billet holders approved this plan. Those two senior ad hoc committees of non-permanent billet holders will use this plan to develop a subsequent implementation plan. Then, those two senior ad hoc committees of non-permanent billet holders will be responsible for overseeing the execution of their own implementation plan.

What happened to the well-established and inter-related responsibilities described above and upon which this plan was based? What happened to the JTS guiding principle of using commanders as primary trainers? I thought transforming the DoD bureaucratic and institutionally protective status quo mindset meant streamlining vice complicating processes to make them more responsive to the future's fast-paced and dynamic uncertainties.

Being included in many of this plan's goals validates the JTS processes. Why did those committees go to such great lengths to re-package symptoms of our improperly executed JTS and not analyze why we do not properly execute the JTS? With this plan, those committees succeeded only in adding more bureaucracy to well-known and long-standing joint training deficiencies. Somehow they forgot that leadership, not committees, is ultimately responsible for effective training.

Army Col. Douglas MacGregor's excellent Winter '00-'01 Joint Forces Quarterly article, The Joint Force - A Decade, No Progress, captures the underlying flaw with this joint training transformation strategic plan as well as with DoD's transformation efforts in general: "Bureaucratic power does not shift voluntarily. Civilian leadership in the Pentagon, White House, and Congress is essential to the future of jointness. Until legislation as monumental as the National security Act of 1947 is enacted to restructure the defense establishment within the context of reform, nothing of substance will occur. Lectures, demonstrations, and expressions of support by senior officers have not and will not yield tangible results to advance jointness and rationalize the allocation of increasingly scarce funds in the years ahead."

The strategic plan's authors decided to continue down the path of our dysfunctional execution of the current JTS, and decided to put off trying to find the holistic fixes to our joint training challenges. Those responsible for this strategic plan should have taken a few moments to reflect on President George W. Bush's quote included in the beginning of this plan: "Transformation is important because the decisions we make today, or put off, will shape our nation's security for decades to come."

Lt. Col. Matthew Dodd is the pen name of an active-duty Marine Corps officer stationed at the Pentagon. He can be reached at mattdodd1775@hotmail.com.

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ARTICLE 03

Conscripted Service: Good for Young Men and Society

By Patrick Hayes

There's something wrong with a society where a large number of teenagers are no-nothing, uneducated, ignorant, emotionally dead and directionless garbage. Tough words? Maybe, but what words do we tell the families of slain and injured police officers, and other citizens, who have fallen pray to this tide of useless scum, living off society at the expense of us all, knowing there are no consequences for their actions?

Recently, there were two handgun attacks on law enforcement officers in New Mexico by youths who thought nothing of shooting a cop. The two officers were wounded, one suspect was killed (by a veteran cop), the other wounded (by a rookie). Nationally, teen-involved shootings and shootings at police officers are on the rise. The question is, why?

Bottom line - an entire generation of teens (with more to come) are growing up without self-respect, much less respect for anyone else. They have no goals, no direction and certainly no discipline. They learn nothing from their TV shows, their computer and video games, and their Playstation II - nothing, that is, except reckless and needless violence, without consequences. And many parents of these "children" prove there are no consequences.

If today's teens and twenty-somethings have it so tough, how did our society survive the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the movement west and the building of a country, the Great Depression, two world wars, not to mention the centuries upon centuries of all our forefathers who had it even tougher?

Would today's teens have survived those tests of character? Obviously not. So why are we pandering to them now? Why is "discipline" a politically incorrect word to use in the same sentence as "children" or "teens"? Why don't teachers have the support of parents when those parents are told their son or daughter needs a little "guidance" - or in old-fashioned parlance - discipline?

Like many other Americans, I am really tired of listening to the whining from the Left: the sociologists, the psychologists and the ever-present liberal apologists, telling us that everyone has an excuse for their actions. They didn't receive enough love, their mother didn't read to them, their father was aloof, or absent. So this becomes carte blanche for this societal garbage to do anything for kicks? "They're just kids, so send them to treatment rather than prison," is becoming a worn cliché, especially after these "kids" commit bloody, reckless, needless murder and other acts of violence.

We have become not only a teen-violent society, but also a society of "victims" and "losers." Andrea Yates in Texas murdered her five children in deliberate cold blood and claimed it was "a woman's thing," and received the staunch support of feminists and other left-wing activists. Her children, however, won't have the opportunity to become restless juveniles.

Another prime example in this country of the completely left-wing, mindless, useless parenting are the parents of Johnny "bin" Walker, the Taliban fighter from northern California. Rather than neglected, this kid was given everything he wanted - apparently never denied anything - and still ended up in an Afghan prison where an American former Marine and CIA officer was murdered! "But," we hear, "Johnny has problems." BS! Johnny's only problem should be facing down a firing squad!

There is something inherently wrong with a society that protects the maladjusted perpetrators at the expense of the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens, while giving little or nothing to the few who volunteer to serve. However, at least since the draft-dodger left the White House, the current administration has moved to improve the lot of the American military - a step in the right direction, but why do these young men and women who protect our country appear to stand alone?

Military obligation as a part of citizenship is as old as the Greeks, who required their young men to serve - and in serving, learned what being a citizen really meant. Romans, from 17 to 60, considered service in the militia to be a great honor. There are still young men and women in the United States who feel it a privilege to wear their country's uniform.

But there are many others, thanks to the re-emergence of the American Left in the 1960s, who have, certainly since the Vietnam War, denigrated serving their country and fostered the "do your own thing" mentality on the youth that has grown up since the 1970s. The result, as argued previously, is another lost generation.

How many generations can we afford to lose?

Two of the elements that run through our history is that men usually have had to go to war, or at least serve their country at some point in their lives and, war or not, there was always a direction to follow, or objectives to be achieved - and historically, men gained that direction and discipline in their own lives by serving in the military.

Anyone think it a little strange that the mass "problems" with teenagers began soon after the draft ended in 1973 - with the crop of Dr. Spock-guided parents?

Yes, there have been extended periods of time when there was no conscription in the United States. However, there were other societal "norms" that gave individuals their sense of dignity, discipline and direction - such as family and the extended family, a sense of belonging, a sense of honor, and a sense of personal pride. Today's "family" usually consists of a single parent with children, or a combination of two divorced families uniting - for a while - usually with a collection of confused and rootless offspring without direction, belonging, pride, and dignity - and certainly without discipline.

The current threat of terrorism is an aberration. The threat of violence from criminals - who are getting younger all the time - is a constant in our society. The question is, what, as an advanced society with all the rights and privileges of such a society, do we do?

Today, we are engaged in a very violent, civilian-threatening war against worldwide terrorism. Yet, much of the military, and certainly National Guard and Reserve units, are under-strength, under-trained and under prepared for the threats the country faces.

Maybe, just maybe, the answer to both dilemmas facing the country is reintroducing conscripted service - the draft. No one would argue that the draft would immediately solve societal problems, or that the military wants society's misfits. But it may be a place to start. When you have a society that has grown so soft and ignorant that its young members know nothing of where they came, depending on a small cadre of ill-trained and ill-equipped volunteers - which continues to get smaller - to hold the line and protect them, then we invite the common threat of victimization, as we witnessed on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Left will tell us that there were many reasons why we were attacked on September 11, but there is one primary reason that the attack was so successful. We, as a nation, were unprepared, we were weak and we were ignorant. We as a nation are now led by a Congress with the likes of Tom Daschle, Joe Biden, Ed Kennedy, Pat Leahy, Joe Lieberman, Chuck Shumer, and Hillary Clinton, to name but a few, none of whom has ever served a minute in uniform, who seem to be out of touch with the majority of Americans. They lack the knowledge, but more importantly, they lack the experience to be able to make, much less comprehend, decisions of life and death made on a battlefield.

Two years of conscripted military service for every male of 18 years of age would, I believe, bring the sense of direction, purpose and discipline back to a country that is adrift in a violent and threatening sea. Although the skipper and crew are sound, the ship's hull and rudder seems to be spineless and lacking direction.

With a reinstated draft, it would no longer be necessary for most recruiters to be scouring the bottom of the barrel for warm bodies. From the Defense Department's position, it would no longer be necessary to lower the standards to such a level that it becomes a dangerous proposition to field such troops who are ill-trained, ill-equipped, ill-led, with a total lack of discipline.

Two years of conscripted service for every able-bodied male, without college deferments or family-purchased "get out of draft" cards, would change the complexion of crime in this country. Young men would again be given direction and a meaning to their lives, if only to know that they want to do something other than serve in the military following their term. Regardless, that training would remain with them for the rest of their lives and help guide them to be productive citizens, possibly even elected officials. But at least they would learn to make that decision and have those goals, enhanced by the self-discipline and self-respect gained in a no-holds barred military environment.

Once in uniform, the time-wasting "sensitivity training" and other anti-military nonsense invoked by the Clinton crowd that worked to devoid the services of their raison d'etre - to fight and win wars (or as another former Marine recently reminded me, to close with and kill the enemy) - need to be addressed. The military must get back to basics: bayonet practice and rifle marksmanship, leadership and responsibility. Pregnancy and the military is an oxymoron.

The military is not a social science laboratory. It is what keeps us protected from the barbarians at the gate. Like the Greatest Generation, we need to again produce a generation of men who believe in themselves, but more importantly, believe in their country, unlike the crop of spineless handwringers currently holding sway in the U.S. Senate.

Patrick Hayes is a contributing editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at Gyrene65@netscape.net.

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ARTICLE 04

The Dirty Nuke - What It Is and Isn't

By Robert G. Williscroft

On March 18, the Washington Post published an article by staff writer Jo Warrick, discussing the potential danger posed by old Soviet RTGs (Radiothermal Generators) falling into the hands of terrorists. Warrick's thesis is that strontium-90, which is used to power some of these RTGs, could be used in the construction of dirty bombs - conventional bombs that are wrapped in a layer of radioactive material, so when they explode, they spread a layer of radioactive contamination over a wide area.

In support of this thesis, Warrick cites the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and the Federation of American Scientists. Both these groups are left-wing, anti-nuclear organizations whose agendas include eliminating anything nuclear from modern life. In support of their anti-nuclear agenda, these guys routinely distort the nature of radioactivity and its effects, and they exaggerate its consequences. They can dupe the public with their distortions and exaggerations because the organizational names they have chosen evoke public trust. Warrick's real focus in this article is to use the public's fear of terrorists obtaining material for dirty nukes as a way to eliminate further deployment of RTGs.

Within the context of this discussion, it will be useful to examine more closely what an RTG really is and what environmental threat it really poses.

In its simplest implementation, an RTG consists of a radioactive source that produces heat that activates a thermocouple to produce electricity. Most Western RTGs employ plutonium as the radioactive source, since plutonium produces the most concentrated heat from the smallest amount of source material, and so allows for very compact RTGs. Since the amount of Plutonium is far below that needed for a nuclear explosive device, the only danger is that related to contamination from the plutonium itself.

These compact devices are particularly useful as power sources in spacecraft that will be out of contact with the concentrated sunlight, and to power devices in remote terrestrial locations, such as underwater sensors, navigational beacons, transponders, etc. Lead shielding makes up most of the mass of RTGs. Plutonium powered units weigh only a few pounds and can mass even less when power requirements are very small. The typical Soviet style RTGs weigh in at one to three thousand pounds, because they have relatively high power requirements, and they are usually powered with strontium-90. One can assume that the Soviets used the less efficient strontium-90 in their RTGs, because they slated all their plutonium for nuclear weapons.

The total amount of nuclear material contained in a typical RTG is insufficient to cause a contamination problem over greater than a few square yards. As is explained below, the strontium-90 loaded Soviet RTGs are virtually useless as sources for "dirty nukes." Most of the remaining RTGs are miles below the ocean surface or millions of miles away in deep space, doing what they were designed to do.

So, what is the "best" nuclear material to use in a "dirty nuke"? This depends on your objective. If you want to irritate your enemy for a very long time, say 75 thousand to 4.5 billion years, you use a low-level long half-life material like uranium-234 or 238, or thorium-230, but if you want to deny your enemy use of the contaminated territory for 20 thousand years or so, use a plutonium mixture, and use radium-226 to keep him out for over 1.5 million years.

On the other hand, if you want to harm a bunch of people and close off an area for about a decade you use cobalt-60. But if you want to do some real damage to humans while regaining access to the area in a couple of weeks or so, use iodine-131.

The problem with using strontium-90 in a dirty bomb is that it really causes very little human damage. It gives out only beta particles (high speed electrons), which can be stopped by a few feet of air, a sheet of paper, or even your skin. External burns resulting from intimate contact with concentrated strontium-90 are indistinguishable from any other burns and heal in the same way. The only significant danger from strontium-90 is when it is ingested and taken up in the bones, where it affects the bone marrow and can eventually cause one of several cancers. Fortunately, the body throws off any strontium relatively quickly, so even when ingested, the danger eventually goes away. It does hang around for 30 or so years in the environment, but you can live with it. As bomb stuff, it's really not worth the effort.

The point is, if you go to the lengths necessary to detonate a dirty bomb over one of our major cities in the United States today, you're NOT going to use strontium-90. You're wasting your time.

Either you go for maximum short-term human impact, or you hang up a long-term keep out sign, but you don't piddle around with strontium.

Warrick and the Post are nothing more than mouthpieces for the anti-nuclear Left. Unfortunately, their scare tactics work, because the general readership understands only what it reads and hears, and these guys supply most of the words and sounds.

Robert G. Williscroft is DefenseWatch Navy Editor. He can be reached at dwnavyeditor@argee.net.

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ARTICLE 05

Ground Combat Training for the Air Force

By John Szelog

Most people who join the Air Force will tell you, "I didn't join to carry a rifle", or something to that effect. The general line of thought is that the Security Forces can handle any problems. If things get too out of hand, they'll call in the Army or Marines, and they'll clean house.

In the mean time, everybody else will hunker down in their bunkers or generate aircraft. Whatever, they'll be doing something else. If you suggest that they might have to pick up a rifle and defend the base, their aircraft, or even themselves, you'll most likely get a strange look, and some comment to the negative, in return.

It's a given that the Air Force isn't a primary ground fighting force. We're the "smart" ones. We stick our officers in planes and send them off to do the fighting, while the enlisted folk sit around, drink beer and barbecue, while waiting for the planes to return.

Unfortunately, and as is the case for many Americans, memories are short. In the opening days of the Tet Offensive in January 1968, American air bases were penetrated by Viet Cong units. In Korea, significant attention and training is devoted to scenarios involving penetration of the bases by North Korean special forces units. Air Force units that deploy to remote locations issue weapons to their personnel, because they will have to defend the aircraft and themselves if the base is hit by a ground attack.

Despite all this, no one in the Air Force, besides the Security Forces, are trained in Air Base Ground Defense (ABGD). The majority of people in the Air Force only get limited training with the M16 rifle or M9 pistol, and the intervals have been slowly creeping out, from once a year in the early 1990s, to once every three years now.

Other than that, with the exception of personnel who go to specialized units, i.e., Combat Control/ Pararescue, TACP, Combat Weather, etc., no one gets any training, not even mechanical familiarization, on any other weapons in the inventory.

The Air Force has added "Warrior Week" to Basic Training, but it is noticeably devoid of any ground combat training. The nearest thing to that is the carrying of rifles by recruits. Otherwise, "Warrior Week" is basically a camping trip, so new recruits can "experience" the hardships of field life in the Air Force.

The Security Forces have an ABGD school called Ground Combat Readiness Evaluation Squadron (GCRES - the name may have changed by now). The school is two weeks long. The first week is classroom instruction and practice, the second week is practical application in the field, and the course is culminated by a three-day field training exercise.

It's a wonder why the Air Force hasn't added this school to Basic Training. It would easily accomplish the functions of "Warrior Week" and then some, because recruits could live in tents, sleep in fighting positions and be attacked at various times of the day and night. Not only that, but the course could be adapted to include mechanical training on the various weapons that the Security Forces use, such as the M60 machine gun, M249 squad automatic weapon, night vision and intrusion detection equipment, emergency call for mortar fire, etc. This way, non-Security Forces personnel are familiar with the weapons and equipment they'll have to use if they augment the Security Forces.

Arguments against training everyone in the Air Force range from maintenance personnel being needed on their jobs at all times, to money, to the fact that additional security forces would be called in, or the position would be abandoned.

First, maintenance personnel aren't at their duty positions twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Second, damaged or destroyed aircraft don't fly very well. Third, what's more expensive, training a bunch of recruits for an additional week, or replacing several multi-million dollar aircraft, millions of dollars worth of equipment, and the loss of tens or hundreds of trained personnel? Fourth, even if additional forces are on the way, they still take time to get there, and somebody has to defend the base in the interim. Fifth, a commander can't abandon the position simply because of sporadic, organized attacks. Nothing short of a threat that the base would be overrun, would justify pulling out.

Finally, everyone in the Air Force is in the military and the military fights wars. Simply because the Air Force concentrates on air warfare does not automatically exclude it's personnel from ground combat. Ask anybody who was at an air base in Viet Nam during Tet in 1968.

The Air Force needs to look seriously at training it's personnel for defending multi-billion dollar air bases and assets. This includes finding ways to arm maintenance personnel so they can carry weapons while still able to work relatively unhindered. Unfortunately, this will probably work out the way everything else in the U.S. military does: many lives will have to be lost and larges amounts of equipment destroyed, then someone will have a massive revelation and decide that ABGD training is a critical skill. For a little while, anyway.

John M. Szelog is a Contributing Editor to DefenseWatch. He can be reached at streetgang52@hotmail.com.

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ARTICLE 06

Medal of Honor Recipient - Gary, Arthur D., Lt.j.g. USN

Rank and organization: Lieutenant, Junior Grade, U.S. Navy, USS Franklin.

Place and date: Japanese Home Islands near Kobe, Japan, 19 March 1945. Entered service at: Ohio. Born: 23 July 1903, Findlay, Ohio.

Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as an engineering officer attached to the USS Franklin when that vessel was fiercely attacked by enemy aircraft during the operations against the Japanese Home Islands near Kobe, Japan, 19 March 1945.

Stationed on the third deck when the ship was rocked by a series of violent explosions set off in her own ready bombs, rockets, and ammunition by the hostile attack, Lt.j.g. Gary unhesitatingly risked his life to assist several hundred men trapped in a messing compartment filled with smoke, and with no apparent egress.

As the imperiled men below decks became increasingly panic stricken under the raging fury of incessant explosions, he confidently assured them he would find a means of affecting their release and, groping through the dark, debris-filled corridors, ultimately discovered an escapeway. Staunchly determined, he struggled back to the messing compartment three times despite menacing flames, flooding water, and the ominous threat of sudden additional explosions, on each occasion calmly leading his men through the blanketing pall of smoke until the last one had been saved.

Selfless in his concern for his ship and his fellows, he constantly rallied others about him, repeatedly organized and led firefighting parties into the blazing inferno on the flight deck and, when firerooms 1 and 2 were found to be inoperable, entered the No. 3 fireroom and directed the raising of steam in one boiler in the face of extreme difficulty and hazard. An inspiring and courageous leader, Lt.j.g. Gary rendered self-sacrificing service under the most perilous conditions and, by his heroic initiative, fortitude, and valor, was responsible for the saving of several hundred lives. His conduct throughout reflects the highest credit upon himself and upon the U.S. Naval Service.