By Ed Offley

It is grim reading.

An informed, articulate and concerned defense expert using the pen name, Spartacus, has written a 12,000-word analysis of how Congress has behaved since the terrorist attacks of 9-11 thrust the United States into a global war. Several news media reports this week hinted that Spartacus is a veteran defense aide on Capitol Hill who has been forced to hide his or her true identity for protection from retaliation. In any event, Spartacus is a hero to me.

We have posted an edited text of this alarming analysis, Mr. Smith Is Dead, on this website, and I urge all of our readers to take the time to study it.

Eight months after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, we are still struggling to take out the evil phalanx of al Qaeda that killed over 3,000 Americans and foreigners alike on Sept. 11, 2001. Thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are deployed overseas in combat or support operations to stamp out the al Qaeda terrorists and their supporters. The list of countries where our forces are either operating or planning to intervene includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, several former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Georgia, Yemen, Somalia and the Philippines.

What has Congress done?

According to Spartacus, a bipartisan gang of senior-ranking members of the Senate and House of Representatives has used the urgency of war and rhetoric of defense to raid the 2002 Pentagon budget for tens of billions of dollars in pork-barrel projects that provide neither service to the warfighters or support to genuine military needs.

While the U.S. Air Force and Navy are literally flying the wings off their combat and support aircraft to carry out Operation Enduring Freedom, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle stole $50 million in Pentagon Operation & Maintenance Funds to indemnify a South Dakota gold mining company whose inactivated facility might - might - someday be used for a scientific research project with some military application.

Ignoring the DoD's and Air Force's own budget requests and warnings by the White House Office of Management and Budget, a cartel of senators led by Alaska Republican Ted Stevens rammed through a plan for the Air Force to lease Boeing 767 airliners that would be converted to aerial refueling tankers. One informed estimate is that the cost of procuring 100 aircraft through this procedure (which apparently violates existing congressional restrictions on leasing) would cost the taxpayers $12 billion more than simply purchasing the aircraft.

And that Pompey-spouting popinjay from West Virginia, Sen. Robert Byrd, continued his annual ripoff of the defense budget with five projects totaling $44 million, including a military museum and a new National Guard armory.

Meanwhile, despite the obvious reality that an ongoing war requires an influx of Operations and Maintenance funding for military units, both Democrats and Republicans alike raided the 2002 Defense Appropriations Budget of more than $2.1 billion for a laundry list of unnecessary and superfluous pork projects including procurement "reforms" that have been attacked as charades, military museum construction, railroad track realignments, and the like.

Spartacus is exceptionally angry over the sleight-of-hand maneuvers and Stalinist language-twisting employed by powerful Senators and Congressmen to mask their theft of funds desperately needed by the U.S. military:

In addition to the active participants in this shameful raid of defense dollars, Spartacus is also critical of the Bush administration and Pentagon for not putting up more of a fight against it (Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld briefly threatened to recommend a presidential veto of the defense bill when Congress appeared likely to delete the urgently overdue imposition of additional military base closings, but later gave in to a "compromise" that would set the next base closure rounds from 2003 to 2005. And President Bush in the end signed the legislation despite its many flaws.) Even self-described "pork buster" Sen. John McCain draws the ire of Spartacus for what the analyst concluded was the Arizona Republican's sham "expose" of Pentagon pork followed by acquiescence in the pork-laden spending bill.

If what Spartacus has chronicled is accurate - and the analysis is heavily researched and footnoted like a scholarly paper - we can identify a new enemy of the U.S. military and American people: The entire leadership of both political parties in Congress who have surrendered to individual ego and greed while American service personnel are fighting and dying in combat.

I urge you: Read the Spartacus article, and get angry. Believe me, you will.

Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

Elements of the storied 82nd Airborne Division are deploying to Afghanistan. But air power will be the only big stick our paratroopers will have when they find trouble - because they'll be flying off to battle without their cannons. Since close-in artillery support is as important to infantry grunts as glue is to a cobbler, this doesn't make a lick of sense.

Take Napoleon at Waterloo. When a muddy field prevented him from moving his cannons, he postponed his attack against Wellington. The consequences of that few-hour delay changed history - Napoleon's army was crushed, and he was exiled.

Waterloo apparently was a tutorial lost on Lt. Col. W.K. Smith, the 2/502nd Airborne Infantry's commander, during the first big U.S. Army fight of the Vietnam War. "I don't need artillery ... I've got my Tac Air," Smith told the 2/320th Artillery Battalion CO, Lt. Col. William Braun.

But thanks to Murphy's Law - anything that can go wrong will - the fighter aircrafts' fuel was contaminated, and Smith's air support evaporated. Only the 2/502nd's brave paratroopers saved the day.

The U.S. Army spends millions of dollars a year examining all its ops. There's even a Center for Army Lessons Learned, where lessons are recorded and evaluated, after which pamphlets are printed and distributed by the truckload. Which is all peachy keen except that too many of today's top brass don't seem to read 'em.

In Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda, where few things were done right, there were no cannons to support our grunts when they found themselves in the same sort of pickle as Smith's paratroopers in 1965. The difference is that Braun wisely had his guns nearby and soon had them barking, while our senior commanders in Afghanistan left their cannons back in the States. Once again, there was no artillery fire available that could be brought in close to protect our infantry, and once again our grunts paid dearly for that mistake - and once again brave infantrymen saved the day.

The decisions that both the early units in Afghanistan and now the 82nd would deploy without cannons were made at the four-star level. And now the 82nd infantry skippers - soon to lead their warriors in another campaign - have to send our soldiers out to fight without the proper force protection.

You'd think that the overall Afghan theater boss man, Gen. Tommy Franks - who got his baptism-to-fire in Vietnam as a young artillery officer - would understand the importance of cannon fire, would know that tactical air support is not something you bet young lives on, and would order the 82nd to take their tubes when they deploy this month, especially after Anaconda.

In the first campaign we've fought since World War II in which every bean and bullet comes by air, I suspect the "no cannons" call is because artillery and its ammo are heavy and would tie up a lot of aircraft. The word also is that a Pentagon number cruncher has said to keep the U.S. footprint there small - which smacks of what we did in Somalia, where, to our everlasting regret, we also didn't have the requisite firepower to look after our fighters.

If these are the reasons, we're talking total dereliction of duty, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should lop off the heads of those who've allowed complete gyms, air-conditioned billets and comfy beds to be flown in to that troubled region, supposedly for the welfare of the troops. Troop welfare begins with keeping those up front alive - giving them the right numbers, the right combat gear and the right kind of reliable, all-weather fire support to do the job over creature comforts for the REMFs bringing up the rear.

"In the whole 40 years I've been around the Army, the Army has been outgunned artillerywise," Army Secretary Thomas White stated recently while defending the $11 billion Crusader cannons high up on Rumsfeld's budget hit list.

White should talk to his generals. Why buy cannons if you're not going to use them - unless they're just one more big, wet kiss for the military-industrial-congressional complex?

And by the way, our very competent British allies took their cannons with them to Afghanistan. You remember the Brits - they were the victors at Waterloo.

http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page, and he can be reached at teagles@hackworth.com. Send mail to P.O. Box 11179, Greenwich, CT 06831.

© 2002 David H. Hackworth

By Paul Connors

Immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9-11, the U.S. Air Force, along with the other services implemented "stop-loss" programs to retain military personnel scheduled to separate or retire from active service. The stop-loss orders immediately filtered down into the reserve component as well and Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard personnel were prevented from leaving the military.

For reserve component members, that meant the only people who would be permitted to leave were those facing mandatory retirement at age 60. Everyone else was locked in.

It was amusing for me to watch first-term airmen who had no intention of staying beyond their first enlistment be told they had to. But in the Air National Guard, stop-loss was a month-to-month thing and those most affected had to return to drills each month not knowing if they would have to continue the next month. It was disconcerting to the members and their families, but also to their civilian employers and even educational institutions.

The Air Force did things differently than the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. Those services sat down and determined which military occupational specialties they needed and at what grades. In contrast, the Air Force issued a "blanket" stop-loss order that initially affected everyone, officers and enlisted.

This blanket order made people in the active Air Force wonder if it wasn't being used as a tool to redress imbalances in the force structure caused by previous personnel management program errors and miscalculations. Despite the war on terrorism and individual plans made by thousands of personnel planning to separate or retire, the Air Force decided to retain people in almost every career field. That decision has cost the government hundreds of millions of dollars in additional salaries and benefits that could be better directed elsewhere.

As the nation continues its war on terrorism eight months after that fateful September day, the Air Force and its reserve components continue to mismanage their personnel requirements. While the service has listed the stop-loss orders from many career fields, there are still many instances (navigators for example) where people are being retained without a valid or compelling need.

Air Force navigators, like their pilot brothers, are all commissioned officers. After the initial stop-loss order was implemented last Sept. 12, many navigators were retained involuntarily and assigned to staff positions normally held by pilots. Some of the positions were either/or, but navigators received the assignments primarily because the Air Force was trying to get as many pilots as it could back into cockpits to relieve the pilot shortage.

However, the Air Force seems to have ignored one development that was already helping mitigate the pilot shortage: With the downturn in the economy and the mass layoffs of civilian airline pilots, many former Air Force pilots have re-approached the service requesting to return to active duty. The Air Force has received more applications than anticipated.

(This raises another question about the overall personnel management performance: As the service absorbs pilots back onto active duty from civilian life, the Air Force reserve and ANG, they are paying large pilot retention bonuses that are probably not needed, a potentially huge waste of taxpayers' money.)

The irony in all of this is that stop-loss depends on which major command (MAJCOM) the member belongs to. In some MAJCOMs, enlisted members and officers seeking to leave active duty are routinely permitted to do so. But in others, applications for separation are automatically denied. Several navigators have contacted DefenseWatch citing these inconsistencies (and have asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution from commanders). Several of these officers were scheduled to retire or leave active duty and all had civilian careers waiting for them. By now, with separation dates unknown, all have seen those civilian job opportunities evaporate. It's the same in the ANG and Air Force Reserve, where the mobilizations for active duty continue unabated.

In the enlisted force and especially on active duty, there are career fields in some wings where the shops are at 100 percent manning, and still Guardsmen and reservists are continuing to be activated to support the mission(s) of the active duty unit. Neither the active-duty airman nor the reserve component member can leave, and the reservist/Guardsman is further inconvenienced by being mobilized for an ill-planned or poorly conceived deployment. And once again, families and employers are expected to deal with the poor management decisions made at the highest levels of the Air Force, the Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard.

What are the most likely outcomes to this bad personnel policy? Does stop-loss really work and does it address the real needs of manpower management and personnel planning for the future?

To listen to active-duty and reserve component personnel, it most definitely does not work. At best, this is an ill-conceived, stopgap measure that retains personnel against their will after their separation or retirement dates, for the simple reason that Air Force planners have not designed and implemented an effective system to recruit, train and retain quality personnel.

People who leave the military short of a career do so for a variety of reasons. Some are valid and some are not. But forcing people to remain beyond their obligated term of service causes hardship for the members involved and exposes everyone in the unit to the results of those actions. Even those unaffected by a refused retirement application are affected because they walk away wondering if they will receive the same treatment when their time to leave the military arrives. It is not a good impression to leave in the mind of anyone.

While stop-loss may solve a temporary problem, it is never a long-term fix. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps realized that and when they implemented their programs, they only retained the bare minimum of personnel in critical career fields: The entire Army, Navy and Marine Corps were not retained involuntarily.

The Air Force needs to look to its sister services for personnel management guidance during this time of uncertainty. As we fight this war on terror, we need to provide the armed forces with all the tools they need to win the larger struggle.

Keeping people past their time is not the way to do that.

Paul Connors is DefenseWatch Air Force Editor. He can be reached at paulconnors@hotmail.com

By Robert G. Williscroft

SCENE I

Pitch-black screen fades to dark, grainy image of a one-story building surrounded by a 12-foot high fence topped with razor-sharp concertina wire. From time to time, light flashes from the surfaces of the razor barbs, leaving an eerie afterglow that fades back into the grainy darkness.

Front and center, a silhouette rises from the bottom of the screen. It appears to be a man, shrouded in black, crouching in the shadows. In the background, against the still of the night, footsteps emanating from the left and the right grow steadily louder. The crouched figure moves through the shadows to the right as a man emerges from the gloom near the fence. The man appears to be an armed soldier, his rifle slung at the ready under his right arm.

The soldier pauses to listen for the approaching footsteps from the other direction. As he leans forward, straining to see through the gloom, the figure hidden in the shadows behind him glides forward, reaches around the soldier's head with his left arm, and smoothly slits his throat with a black-bladed knife held in his right hand.

At the same moment sound and motion from the left of the screen draw attention to a dimly perceived image of another soldier crumpled to the ground with a crouched figure fading back into the shadows out of view.

The silence is suddenly interrupted by a loud metallic snap from right center.

Zoom in to a crouched figure cutting links in the wire fence. Within a few seconds, he is joined by a second figure. In moments they dart through an opening just large enough to allow the passage of a crouched man.

Pan to the building door, offset to the right side. One of the intruders is standing before the spy hole. He is now wearing the outer jacket and hat of one of the downed soldiers. He raps sharply on the door. The sound is loud and startling in the still night. Somewhere in the distance a dog barks, and then another, and another, until a cacophony of barking rises in the background. A distant human shout rings out, and the barking ceases as rapidly as it had started.

The door opens a crack. There is no light behind the door. The disguised figure before the door jerks it open suddenly, pulling out the man inside by his grip on the door handle. Before he can utter a cry, the second intruder slits his throat.

The two intruders are joined by three others who distribute themselves between the door and the fence opening. On the outside of the fence, several more figures can be seen dimly forming a line into the shadows beyond. Two men enter the building, and shortly begin to hand out weapons and boxes which are passed from man to man, through the fence into the shadows beyond.

Close-up, left shoulder of one of the men directing the operation. Pan down to his left hand: He is missing the little finger.

Flash to left profile of man in charge. Zoom in to his left cheek to show an angry vertical scar.

Zoom to wide shot as intruders slip back through fence and fade into the darkness.

Pan across the empty scene, with the sprawled bodies of three soldiers. In the distance a lone dog howls plaintively.

Fade to black.

SCENE II

In quick succession flash from scene to scene, pausing only a few seconds at each:

* The back of a man in a room before a table. He appears to be making a bomb. Another figure in the room lays his left hand on the man's shoulder. The hand is missing the little finger.

* Seen from their backs, men are passing through a small room. A man whose face remains concealed by the men passing before him passes out belts of ammunition. Another man stands in the shadows behind him. Briefly we see his left cheek with an angry vertical scar.

* Men are undergoing some kind of military training in a nondescript desert setting - it could be anywhere. Briefly, through a cloud of dust, we see two men in discussion. One has no little finger on his left hand, the other a vertical scar on his left cheek.

* Over the left shoulder of a man at a desk, we see him sign several invoices. His cheek holds a vertical scar.

* Several men are loading into a pickup, obviously preparing for some kind of military action. Their leader is missing the little finger on his left hand.

SCENE III

In quick succession flash from scene to scene, pausing only a few seconds at each:

* Long shot of a bridge. A yellow bus crosses. It is clearly marked "school." The bridge blows up as the bus reaches the middle. We see a watching man in silhouette. He has a vertical scar on his left cheek.

* People are entering some kind of church. We are too close to see what kind. Two men dressed just like the churchgoers suddenly reveal automatic weapons and open fire. One of the men is missing the little finger on his left hand.

* Twenty or so people are sitting at a formal dinner table. Something crashes through a window and explodes. Briefly in the flash we see a cheek with a vertical scar.

* In a darkened house, we dimly see figures flitting from room to room. In each room there is a brief flash, but no sound. We flash to one room to see a sleeping woman shot with a silenced pistol. The shooter is missing a little finger.

SCENE IV

Wide shot of a well-appointed office. A seal on the wall indicates "Homeland Security."

A man at an expensive desk is being briefed by a person with his back to us.

SYNOPSIS:

Following appropriate dialogue and interaction revealing the identity of the militants, including unassailable evidence concerning the who and what of these incidents, the Homeland leadership authorizes action against the militants, but directs that if at all possible, the man with the scar should be taken alive.

It turns out that these people are part of a larger group from across the border, a group that views them heroically, and willingly hides them within their own ranks and neighborhoods. In attempting to root out the militants, Homeland Security forces cross the border. In the resultant fighting, many so-called civilians are also wounded and killed, although the Homeland Security forces go out of their way to limit such losses.

The world that silently watched the carnage inside the Homeland, reacts with moral outrage against Homeland incursions outside its borders.

Finally, Homeland Security forces kill the man with the missing finger, and surround the man with the scar in a heavily fortified building just over the border. Although it would be easy to take out the entire area from the air, the Homeland Security director decides to wait out the situation hoping that the ringleader can be captured and dealt with according to conventional law.

Homeland Security forces destroy a phalanx of militants in another compound. As always, they do whatever they can to limit civilian casualties. Nevertheless, Scarface cries massacre, and the world believes him. When the compound eventually is inspected by third parties, they discover the lie, but the outrage continues unabated.

Under pressure from his closest allies, the Homeland Security Director eventually lets the man with the scar go, after he promises to do whatever possible to reign in the active militants, even though he has unassailable proof of the man's complicity in everything that has happened.

Meanwhile, Homeland's closest ally is waging its own "War Against Terror," in a no-holds-barred campaign across the world, under the banner of: "If you're not with us, you're with them!" The enemies of this ally are rallying to the cause of Scarface, supplying him and his minions with money and weapons. People in the Homeland are increasingly afraid to go outside, assemble in public places, and send their children to school, as attack after attack directed by Scarface nearly brings them to their knees.

When the Homeland Security Director complains to his allies that they are preventing him from doing exactly what they are doing for themselves, he is ignored. They explain to him that he is refusing to see the larger picture, and that he must work within the framework set by his allies.

And: Oh by the way, they really feel bad about the rising toll of Homeland civilian casualties, but they are a small price to pay for the security of the allies.

FINAL SCENE

Repeat Scene I with one change: The man with the missing little finger is replaced with a ten-fingered man. He has a v-notch missing from his right ear.

CAST OF CHARACTERS (just in case you missed the point!)

Missing Finger - Atef Abayat, senior Tanzim operative.

Scarface - Yasser Arafat.

Homeland Security Director - Ariel Sharon.

Closest Ally - United States.

Allies - Great Britain, France, Germany, etc.

Enemies of Closest Ally - Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, etc.

Extras - Tanzim, the armed wing of the PLO; Force 17, the Tanzim Presidential Guard; Israeli Army; Israeli citizens; you and me.

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

By Matthew Dodd

"What's it like there?"

That's the most common gist of e-mails, phone calls and private conversations that I receive as a result of my current assignment in the Pentagon.

My usual answer is, "I'm still finding out."

To most civilians who have never seen the inside of the Pentagon - and even to many military people who have been blessed with tours of duty far from the five-sided Puzzle Palace on the Potomac - the building and its inhabitants remain objects of curiosity and wonder.

I am proud to say that after 20+ months in my current job, I still have much to learn to qualify for the title of a true "Pentagon insider." I believe a more accurate description of my perspective is that of an "inside Pentagon-outsider."

In keeping with the spirit of several of my previous DefenseWatch articles on Pentagon life ("Ten Things I Do Not Know Or Understand," and "Ten More Things I Do Not Know Or Understand," Feb. 6, 2002), I would like to share some additional thoughts, comments and observations from my Pentagon experiences.

People in the Pentagon seem to be some of the most pre-occupied people I have ever seen. Most of the people I talk to here are very friendly, or at least cordial and polite.

What I find most interesting is that the majority of people roaming the Pentagon's passageways seem so stoic, like they are contemplating some serious situation. I see very few smiles, hear very few "good mornings/afternoons," get a kick out of watching people avoid eye contact with anyone, and like to see the surprised look on people's faces when someone goes out of his or her way to open or hold open a door for them.

I believe the Pentagon would be a much more pleasant place if the good people who work here were more pre-occupied with passing forward common courtesies.

Most of the Pentagon leadership has a short-term focus. This tendency may result in decisiveness during crises, but can be very divisive during day-to-day operations. Instead of setting a course to lead individuals, offices and organizations into the future, too many senior "leaders" are addicted to the adrenalin rush of immediate urgencies, and so they foster an environment designed to survive today and not to thrive tomorrow. To quote a friend of mine, "When people do not know what to do, they do what they know."

This short-term focus is part of the Pentagon's status quo "comfort zone." This is not an effective institutional mindset for it distorts perceptions of reality and requirements, and closes minds to unconventional approaches and possible alternatives.

For example, where is the long-term budget focus when seniors chant "spend it or lose it" at the end of each fiscal year, or "never ask for less or else you will never get more" at budget submission time?

Efforts to transform the armed forces with advanced technology are hampered by the power struggle between short-term focus on evolutionary changes (gradual changes and improvements based on our present course) and the long-term focus on revolutionary changes (radical changes and improvements based on a new visionary course). Finally, a short-term focus is responsible for "inside-the-box" thinking that suppresses or resists "outside-the-box" ideas.

Is the Office of the Secretary Defense (OSD) more out of touch for suggesting radical ideas like establishing standing joint task forces and eliminating service component headquarters? Or are the armed forces themselves more out of touch for staunchly defending the status quo against these ideas and not even willing to consider the merits of such unconventional approaches and possible alternatives in our dynamic global environment?

I am not sure that the collective efforts of the four military services, the Joint Staff, and OSD are setting us up for success.

Each service is busy maximizing its capabilities according to its own vision of what it can and should be - the world's finest and most combat ready Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. A lot of money is being invested in pursuit of maximized service visions - the F-22, the joint strike fighter, the V-22 Osprey, interim brigade combat teams, the DDX land-attack destroyer, etc. - with apparently little to no overarching transformation vision or supervision. Did anybody stop to think that maybe maximizing each service's vision of itself is not the best way to transform the entire force effectively and efficiently?

A common analogy illustrates my concerns about our approach to transformation: Winning a football championship is more than just getting the best receivers, the best linemen, the best offensive and defensive backs, the best quarterback, and the best coaches all together on game day. Those parts are important, but not as important as their overall relationship.

The longstanding, even historical problem with the U.S. armed forces is that the entire team was never designed as a single, functioning unit. Given the longstanding rivalries among the services, the chances are the whole will be far less than the sum of all the best parts.

Legendary Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi understood the importance of these relationships as he transformed the Packers from losers into champions. Lombardi observed, "The challenge for every organization is to build a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another … because the question is usually not how well each person works, but how well they work together." The question for the U.S. military today is not how well each service transforms, but how well they transform together.

Lastly, most of the credit for the Pentagon's successes rightfully belongs to the many dedicated action officers who inhabit this five-sided labyrinth. They are the men and women of any rank who are responsible for diligently working out the details of the many critical and non-critical issues that need attention in order to make the military establishment function as smoothly as possible.

In a world where every issue is ranked as top priority, the "synergy" we should be striving for becomes twisted, and the services or their components instead busily form temporary alliances against common threats to each organization's self-defined best interests. As a result, too many senior officers castrate their subordinates' instincts to work together and ultimately seek the best overall answer or solution. Still, despite institutionalized political consequences, most action officers somehow constantly perform unsung heroics in influencing their seniors' actions and decisions.

Those who work in the Pentagon can quickly decide either to love or hate their jobs, and there are ample reasons to justify either decision.

As a self-proclaimed "inside Pentagon-outsider," I choose to take the road less traveled by deciding to enjoy my work despite all of the shortcomings of the Pentagon and its stoic, short-term-focus schemers. Honesty and a sense of humor have made all the difference in preserving my sanity and survival.

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.

By J. David Galland

As April faded into May again this year, the anniversary of the death of a small nation remained virtually unnoticed. Twenty-seven years is a long time and it seems as though the saga and the memory of Vietnam has evaporated like the morning dew.

America's longest and most costly war seems relegated to no historical significance whatsoever. It is, in reality, a bitter lesson in which America's face was rubbed in the dirt and its legacy written in the blood of America's young men.

The reasons for our defeat are well-known by now: the political leaders of four American administrations - Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford - presided over a conflict that escalated from a low-intensity political and military struggle into a major war involving at its turning point over 540,000 American servicemen.

At the same time, those political leaders embraced a series of military restrictions on the conduct of the war that made victory impossible: the prohibition against taking the fight to North Vietnamese "sanctuaries" inside Cambodia and Laos (except for ineffectual "secret" bombing missions and two limited incursions in 1970 and 1971 that were too little and too late), political limits on the targeting of North Vietnam, and toleration of corrupt South Vietnamese allies who were willing to have the United States defend their country to the last American.

It should come as no surprise to learn - as we did earlier this year on the release of tape-recorded telephone conversations of President Lyndon B. Johnson - that our own political leaders secretly despaired of victory as early as 1965 even as they were organizing the first massive combat deployments to Vietnam. This secret dishonesty only paved the way years of bloodshed that led to a military stalemate and the collapse of support by the American people to sustain the mission in Vietnam. The political maneuvers that severed the umbilical cord after the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accord made it inevitable that South Vietnam would disappear.

It is my assertion that no country can justifiably march 58,000 of its young men off to their deaths, quietly return over 150,000 physically disabled soldiers to their homes and allow another 500,000 to return with serious emotional problems - and then turn away from all memories of the disaster.

This human toll does not take into account several thousand soldiers and airmen who never returned at all. Nearly three decades after the end of the war, the POW/MIA controversy remains unresolved, and the shameful behavior of senior U.S. officials since 1973 to thwart a resolution of the missing has earned the government the distrust of many family members, veterans and other concerned citizens.

Thanks to an attitude by too many Americans to block out the painful memories of our Vietnam experience, too many people today are blind to the history of their nation's involvement in a tiny nation's struggle for freedom against the spread of communism. This has been reinforced by many scholars far removed from the actual event who argued, then and now, that the Vietnam conflict was merely an ongoing civil war.

It was only 20 years after the guns fell silent on the European continent following the Allied victory in World War II, and only a decade since a U.S.-led United Nations coalition halted the advance of the communist North Koreans, when America committed regular ground forces to protect our ally, the Republic of Vietnam. Upon arriving in Vietnam in 1965, American forces began a campaign to defeat the North Vietnamese Army and the guerrilla arm of that force, the Viet Cong.

They faced immediate, self-imposed and mission-defeating restrictions imposed on them by the politicians in Washington, D.C. Our combat units were hamstrung by Washington's prohibition of operating outside the confines of South Vietnam's borders. This restraint effectively precluded any doctrine that set a goal of a conventional military victory, since it provided safe sanctuaries for communist forces and allowed them to keep their supply channels from North Vietnam intact.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon gutted our overall military capability by stripping units worldwide of experienced personnel to fill the demand for forces in Vietnam. This was exacerbated by the Johnson administration's cowardly insistence of waging the Vietnam War "on the cheap" by refusing to order a major reserve call-up or embrace new taxes to pay for the conflict.

As a result, by the middle of 1968, because of the tremendous drain, American forces outside of the Vietnam theater suffered from combat ineffectiveness.

For example, in Europe, only 39 percent of the 465 "status-reporting" units had a personnel readiness that was even equal to their deliberately diminished assigned capability. This meant that 61 percent of all units were combat-ineffective. Even more bad news came on Dec. 31, 1968 when the U.S. Army affirmed that none of its major combat units in Europe had met their operational training readiness conditions for the second straight year.

In South Korea, the military situation was not much brighter. The 2nd and 7th Infantry Divisions assigned to I Corps were desperately short of soldiers and equipment. At one point in 1968, the entire I Corps had only five helicopters available for training or actual operations in defending South Korea from North Korea.

Back in the United States, the war in Vietnam had caused most major military installations, now devoid of traditional corps and divisional units, to become nothing more than grossly under-strength holding receptacles for returning Vietnam veterans. And the few U.S. military units that still flew their unit standards on American soil had been diverted to prepare for domestic riot-control instead of combat training.

During 1968, every CONUS based division and brigade (with the exception of the 82nd Airborne Division) that was evaluated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff was flunked with the lowest ratings possible in all categories of readiness: personnel, training, and logistics. The 82nd Airborne Division was not evaluated because it had a full brigade deployed in Vietnam.

Things were not going well with our South Vietnamese allies either. Although trained and equipped at U.S. expense, the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) never seemed to be able to get its wheels off the ground. It was no secret at the time that many of their inept leaders thought the United States would always be around to save them. From the first direct battle between the ARVN and Viet Cong at Ap Bac in 1963 to the disastrous 1971 invasion of Laos, ARVN units suffered from a chronic lack of will and spirit that translated into battlefield defeat whenever they stood toe-to-toe with the enemy.

Thanks to the psychological victory (albeit tactical defeat) of the enemy Tet Offensive in January 1968, the frustrating and dysfunctional relationship between the United States and South Vietnam finally began to change in 1969 with the Nixon administration's decision to begin withdrawing U.S. ground troops and replacing them with select ARVN units under the "Vietnamization" program."

While the program itself was imposed in a confusing manner, the philosophy underpinning "Vietnamization" was quite simple: It was time for the South Vietnamese themselves to take the leading role in their fight for independence. For the next four years until the cease-fire agreement in 1973, American forces played a steadily-decreasing role in offensive operations. This had the unintended consequence of contributing to a distinct decline in American morale and discipline and a rise in drug abuse and racial tensions within units still operating in Vietnam.

The Paris Peace Accord signed on Jan. 27, 1973, effectively gave America the green light for a total pullout which was accomplished two months later, with the exception of 50 military advisors who remained in the war zone and naval and air units stationed on the periphery of Vietnam.

It is interesting to recall that two major turning points in the Vietnam War came without input from our allies: First, the Johnson bombing halt at the eve of the 1968 U.S. presidential election was made with little or no input from Saigon, and in fact, Thieu's refusal to join the initial peace talks is credited with Nixon's slim election victory over Democratic nominee (and LBJ Vice President) Hubert Humphrey. And four years later, the Nixon administration itself signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam that - although dealing directly with the conflict in South Vietnam - left the Saigon government as the odd man out.

From that point on, the South Vietnamese would have to sink or swim, and two years later, in April 1975, they sank as predicted when North Vietnam launched its final offensive to "liberate' the South.

Strategic planners in the North had counted on a two-year struggle before the red flag would fly over Saigon. However, in light of mass desertions by the South Vietnamese (their commanders usually ran away first), Hanoi realized that the speed of the attack and the sudden South Vietnamese collapse made victory possible. They also gambled correctly that the United States would not intervene again.

Approaching the end, the offensive only took 55 days before North Vietnamese T-55 tanks plowed on to the grounds of the presidential palace in Saigon. There they found an ARVN general filling in for South Vietnamese President Thieu, who had already packed and fled, much like his military commanders.

So it went, 27 years ago, when the Republic of Vietnam vanished from history and America's involvement ended at 0753 local time on the morning of April 30, 1975. The pilot of the helicopter "Lazy Ace" pulled pitch from the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, carrying Ambassador Graham Martin and the American flag that had flown from his embassy out of an exhausting and doomed war.

There is one happy footnote to this tragic tale: A generation of dedicated military officers emerged from the shambles of Vietnam to rebuild and revitalize the U.S. armed forces throughout the remainder of the 1970s and 1980s, even as the public turned its back on them and the war. Our stunning battlefield victory in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 serves as a testament to their unsung heroics.

They, and the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers with whom they served in Vietnam, deserve our attention and respect today.

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.

By Andrea West

Washington, in spring, is quite beautiful. It is ironic that the season of renewal, sunshine, and birds should be a time for hard-fisted struggles over which government agency gets what slice of the fiscal pie.

For veterans, the focus of the budget war will be on the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is attempting to adjust its priorities to reflect a massive demographic shift in the veteran population as the World War II generation passes.

The release of the Bush administration's 2003 budget has set the stage for months of congressional hearings and procedural votes on the VA budget, which is included as a departmental chapter of the overall federal budget. This massive document summarizes not only the Administration's proposed monetary allocation, but its general aim and intent with regard to the VA.

The administration's first contention is that, while the VA will see short-term increases in service provision, the long-term prospect is for a decline in the number of veterans seeking VA assistance. The short-term increase will result from aging veterans and female veterans entering the VA system, and the long-term decline will mirror the decline in the veteran population with the passing of the World War II generation. The administration projects that over the next 20 years, the veteran population will decrease from 25 million to 17 million (assuming that the United States does not enter a protracted war which requires creating a much larger force than today's military of 1.4 million personnel.)

In view of this, the administration intends that the programs offered by the VA be reviewed to ensure that the money is being used to best advantage. The proposal explicitly states that "poor [sic] performing programs that are not mission critical will be eliminated, cut back, or reconfigured so that their funding can be redirected to be more effectively used."

Rated as "ineffective" by the administration are disability and pension claims processing, as well as care for disabled and low-income veterans. Rated as "effective" are cemetery benefits and health care quality. The actual VA medical-care infrastructure is rated as "unknown."

Claims processing is a major issue addressed in the administration's proposed budget. The proposal notes that in 2001, the average claim took 181 days to process (up from 100 in 1996). In addition to an 87-percent increase in the number of claims, the administration cites three reasons for poor performance: complexity of claims or veterans requesting benefits for more than one disability at a time, new laws with immediate start dates that eliminate lead time, and ineffective management of the benefit system.

The administration recommends that the VA should first find practices that work and implement them across the board, give both work and money to the offices that perform well, create "specialized processing centers," and construct a computer system that allows more than one person to work on any given claim at the same time from any VA office in the country.

The benchmarks by which the Administration proposes to measure success are: (1) Process claims in an average of 165 days in 2003, with the end goal of 74 days, and (2) an 88-percent accuracy for rating work, with the end goal of 96 percent.

In addition, the administration recommends that the VA and DoD compare notes on their health care systems and share facilities to save money and improve the system overall. Particularly noted as a means to streamline claims processing was the availability of electronic data on service members in the DOD. The sharing of data would also aid both agencies, which serve retirees who may use both hospital systems. The administration also notes that the VA and the DOD might jointly re-examine their hospital location needs, citing the Chicago area collaboration in the use of an old VA hospital by the DoD. One very interesting proposal suggests the use of DoD air transport for veterans in lieu of commercial airliners.

The administration notes that the VA has been providing service to veterans in all priority levels. The lowest-priority level has grown from 2 to 21 percent of the VA's patients. For these patients, the administration proposes a $1,500 annual deductible, with the veteran paying 45 percent of the cost of treatment until the deductible is met. The administration suggests that underused hospitals, primarily in the North and East, should be converted to clinics. It also recommends the local clinic approach as opposed to the hospital approach.

In terms of overall numbers, the estimates listed in the budget for 2003 reflect an increase of 6.8 percent over the 2002 estimates.

For the discretionary budget authority, which includes such items as medical care, general administration, and the National Cemetery Administration, the proposed amount is $25.5 billion, up from $23.8 billion in 2002. For mandatory outlays, including compensation and pensions, G.I. Bill, and other programs, the recommended amount is $30.28 billion, an increase of $3.33 billion from last year. Direct loan disbursements are recommended for $1.94 billion, an increase of 5 percent from last year. For all types of guaranteed loans, the amount requested is $32.6 billion, $598 million more than in 2002.

Andrea West is DefenseWatch Veterans editor. She can be reached at defensewatchvet@yahoo.com.

Editor's Note: DefenseWatch reader John E. Booth forwarded this multiple-choice test used by the U.S. government to determine that airport security guards do not need to use ethnic profiling to guard against future terrorist incidents. We encourage everyone to take the test and come to his or her own conclusion about the policy.

A Subtle Message For Airport Screeners And Personnel

To ensure that we Americans never offend anyone - particularly fanatics intent on killing us - airport screeners will not be allowed to profile people. They will continue random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, Secret Service agents who are members of the president's security detail, 85-year old congressmen with metal hips, and Medal Of Honor-winning former governors.

Terrorism Test: Choose One Answer Per Question

1. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by:

2. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran was taken over by:

3. During the 1980s a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:

4. In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:

5. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked, and a 70-year-old American passenger was murdered and thrown overboard by:

6. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a U.S. Navy diver was murdered by:

7. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:

8. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:

9. In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:

10. On Oct. 12, 2000, the destroyer USS Cole was bombed and 17 sailors killed by:

11. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked and destroyed and thousands of people were killed by:

12. In 2002, the United States fought a war in Afghanistan against:

13. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:

Correct Answers to Questions 1-13: Hmmm - nope, no patterns anywhere to justify profiling!

Remarks by President George W. Bush at the presentation of Medals of Honor to the late Capt. Ben Salomon and the late Capt. Jon Swanson.

The White House, May 1, 2002

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, and welcome to the White House, and welcome to our beautiful Rose Garden. We gather in tribute to two young men who died long ago in the service to America. In awarding the Medal of Honor to Captain Ben Salomon and Captain Jon Swanson, the United States acknowledges a debt that time has not diminished.

It's my honor to welcome to the Rose Garden the Secretary of Veterans Affairs Tony Principi, Secretary Tom White of the Army, General Eric Shinseki, General John Jumper, Brigadier General David Hicks, the Chaplain - thank you General Hicks for your prayer - Congressman Brad Sherman, Congressman Charlie Norwood, Congressman Mark Udall, World War II veterans, Vietnam veterans, fellow Americans.

Joining us in this ceremony are four men who themselves earned the Medal of Honor: Barney Barnum, Al Rascon, Ryan Thacker, and Nicky Bacon. Thank you all for coming. (Applause.)

President Harry S Truman said he would rather have earned the Medal of Honor than be the Commander-in-Chief. When you meet a veteran who wears that medal, remember the moment, because you are looking at one of the bravest ever to wear our country's uniform. We're honored to welcome these gentlemen.

I'm also pleased to welcome the family of Captain Swanson - Sandee Swanson and their daughters, Holly and Brigid. We're so glad you all are here. (Applause.) I know how proud you must be of the man you have loved and missed for so many years. And seeing you here today, I know that John would be extremely proud.

For Captain Ben Salomon, no living relatives remain to witness this moment. And even though they never met, Captain Salomon is represented today by a true friend, Dr. Robert West. Welcome, sir. (Applause.)

Five years ago, Dr. West was reading about his fellow alumni of the University of Southern California's Dental School. He came upon the story of Ben Salomon of the class of 1937, who was a surgeon in World War II, and was posthumously nominated for the Medal of Honor. The medal was denied on a technicality. Looking into the matter, Dr. West found that an honest error had occurred, and that Captain Salomon was indeed eligible to receive the Medal of Honor.

He earned it on the day he died, July the 7th, 1944. Captain Salomon was serving in the Marianas Islands as a surgeon, in the 27th Infantry Division, when his battalion came under ferocious attack by thousands of Japanese soldiers. The American units sustained massive casualties, and the advancing enemy soon descended on Captain Salomon's aid station. To defend the wounded men in his care, Captain Salomon killed several enemy soldiers who had entered the aid station.

As the advance continued, he ordered comrades to evacuate the tent and carry away the wounded. He went out to face the enemy alone, and was last heard shouting, "I'll hold them off, until you get them to safety. See you later."

In the moments that followed, Captain Salomon single-handedly killed 98 enemy soldiers, saving many American lives, but sacrificing his own. As best the Army could tell, he was shot 24 times before he fell, more than 50 times after that. And when they found his body, he was still at his gun.

No one who knew him is with us this afternoon. Yet America will always know Benjamin Lewis Salomon by the citation to be read shortly. It tells of one young man who was the match for 100, a person of true valor who now receives the honor due him from a grateful country.

The Medal of Honor recognizes acts of bravery that no superior could rightly order a soldier to perform. The courage it signifies - gallant, intrepid service at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty - is written forever in the service record of Army Captain Jon E. Swanson.

A helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, Captain Swanson flew his last mission on his second tour of duty, on February 26th, 1971, over Cambodia. As Allied forces on the ground came under heavy enemy fire, Captain Swanson was called in to provide close air support. Flying at tree-top level, he found and engaged the enemy, exposing himself to intense fire from the ground. He ran out of heavy ordinance, yet continued to drop smoke grenades to mark other targets for nearby gunships.

Captain Swanson made it back to safety, his ammunition nearly gone, and his Scout helicopter heavily damaged. Had he stayed on the ground, no one would have faulted him. But he had seen more - he had seen that more targets needed marking, to eliminate the danger to the troops on the ground. He volunteered to do the job himself, flying directly into enemy fire, until his helicopter exploded in flight.

Captain Swanson's actions, said one fellow officer, "were the highest degree of personal bravery and self-sacrifice I have ever witnessed." Others agreed, and the Medal of Honor was recommended by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and by the late Admiral John McCain. However, only the Distinguished Service Cross was awarded, until a recent review of the case made clear that the nation's highest military honor was in order.

And so today, on what would have been his 60th birthday, the Medal of Honor is presented to the family of Jon Edward Swanson.

The two events we recognize today took place a generation apart, but they represent the same tradition. That tradition of military valor and sacrifice has preserved our country, and continues to this day. Captain Salomon and Captain Swanson never lived to wear this medal, but they will be honored forever in the memory of our country.

Capt. Benjamin Lewis Salomon USA [PDF]

Capt. Jon Edward Swanson, USA [PDF]

Editor's Note: If you know of any MOH recipient who is hospitalized or has passed away recently, please email DefenseWatch MOH Editor Jim H. at bulldogleader@mindspring.com.