Panel Reviewing Base Closings Takes On Rumsfeld Over Suggestions
 

Since 05-17-05

From: Waspscpo@aol.com [mailto:Waspscpo@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 8:04 AM
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Subject: Panel Reviewing Base Closings Takes On Rumsfeld Over Suggestions

Political nastiness is forthcoming.
Its in the air !!!  And this thing
was supposed to be non-partisan !!!

Panel Reviewing Base Closings Takes On Rumsfeld Over Suggestions

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17bases.html

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: May 17, 2005
NY Times

WASHINGTON, May 16 - The independent commission reviewing the Pentagon's recommended list of base closings voiced sharp skepticism on Monday over parts of the plan, warning that some proposals could hurt recruiting and that others fell short of the efficiencies that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had promised.
 

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld answered questions by an independent commission reviewing the Pentagon's proposed base closings.

"Do you really think this was a smart move?" James H. Bilbray, a former Democratic congressman from Nevada, asked Mr. Rumsfeld, referring to a proposal to close and consolidate hundreds of National Guard and Reserve centers nationwide, thus increasing some reservists' travel time.

Mr. Rumsfeld warned the nine-member panel not to make major changes to the list, saying that Pentagon analysts had spent two years reviewing more than 25 million pieces of information and testing 1,000 approaches to devise the complex, interwoven set of recommendations that was announced on Friday.

"One must be careful about taking a selective look at individual components or pieces of these recommendations without considering how those components or pieces fit into the larger whole," Mr. Rumsfeld said in defense of the department's plan to close 180 installations and offices, including 33 big bases.

The Pentagon says its proposal, which would shut, reduce or reorganize more than 800 facilities in all 50 states, would save $48.8 billion over 20 years. The testimony by Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a packed Capitol Hill hearing, signaled the beginning in earnest of a nearly four-month series of hearings on the proposals in Washington and around the country, as well as visits by panel members to each site scheduled for closings or changes.

In the past four rounds of base closings, the commissions have approved 85 percent of the Pentagon's recommendations, leaving some critics to charge that this year's panel would be merely a rubber stamp for the first major overhaul in the nation's military network in a decade. "But at least on Monday, members of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission sought to poke holes in Mr. Rumsfeld's rationale for various parts of the plan, and demonstrate their independence."

Anthony J. Principi, the panel chairman and a former secretary of veterans affairs, asked whether the Pentagon was "putting the cart before the horse" by announcing its recommendations months before it produced the results of a study of strategy, force and missions required by Congress every four years. "That's not a concern we have," Mr. Rumsfeld responded, saying the Pentagon could not wait until every pending review was finished. James V. Hansen, a former Republican congressman from Utah, praised the proposals to combine similar functions of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, like training truck drivers and cooks, at one place, but said more could be done.

"I thought there'd be more interservicing," he said. Two panel members, Harold W. Gehman Jr., a retired four-star admiral, and Phillip Coyle, a former Pentagon official, said that preliminary data submitted by the Defense Department accounted for only 15,000 of the 70,000 troops the military says will return to bases in the United States from Europe. The Pentagon has said it does not need to close as many bases as it originally thought because of the large number of returning troops.

The panel members said that the Pentagon had failed to supply detailed supporting information for the decisions, and that the commission's analysts could not dig into their formidable task without it. A senior Pentagon official, Michael Wynne, said the data was undergoing a security review and would be delivered to the commission by week's end. The panel must submit its findings to President Bush by Sept. 8. He and Congress have until Nov. 7 to accept or reject the findings.

The most contentious issue before the panel seemed to be the fate of reservist installations. The Army alone would close 176 Army Reserve centers and 211 Army National Guard facilities, but it would also build 125 new, multiservice Reserve centers.

General Myers said that state adjutant generals, the top National Guard officials in each state, were involved in the Army's decision-making from the start and generally supported the change. "The realignments and closures that came out of the secretary's recommendations came from the adjutant generals of the various states," General Myers told reporters after the hearing.

About 65 percent of proposed closings involve National Guard or Reserve centers, said one panelist, Samuel K. Skinner, a former secretary of transportation and White House chief of staff under the first President Bush. "It's got to work for them," he said. Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Koper, a retired Air National Guard officer from Ohio who is president of the National Guard Association of the United States, a lobbying group, said the closings and consolidations of Air National Guard facilities, in particular, would hurt recruiting.

"When we're in the personnel battle of our lives, we're at a total loss as to what the Air Force has in mind with respect to personnel," General Koper said in a telephone interview. "We just don't get it." On Monday, communities that received bad news about their local bases on Friday vowed to appeal to the commission. In Kittery, Me., about 3,000 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and state leaders voiced anger over the plan to close the facility, the oldest shipyard continuously operated by the government, Reuters reported.

"It's pretty obvious that a colossal mistake has been made by the Navy and the Defense Department," said Senator Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. The complaints came as an analysis of Defense Department data showed that states that voted for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, in the 2004 election stood to lose 24,289 military and civilian jobs, while states that Mr. Bush carried would gain nearly 12,000 jobs.

On average, states that voted for Mr. Bush in 2004 would gain an average of 383 jobs while states that Mr. Kerry won would lose 1,214 jobs. Independent military analysts said that rather than partisan politics, the trend reflected a shift toward bases with bigger training ranges and the ability to accommodate more troops or civilian workers. These bases tend to be in Southern and Western states.
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Contributed,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(ret)