-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! ARTICLE 3 U.S. Backs NATO Troops in Macedonia Ed.: campaign promises of bringing the troops home are replaced with plans for excursions into Macedonia and pushing NATO right onto Russia’s doorstep. So far: No foreign policy shift since the last administration. Source: AP, 21 June 2001. By BARRY SCHWEID WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration backs NATO on sending peacekeeping troops to Macedonia to help disarm ethnic Albanian militants and is weighing ways to participate, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday. After a meeting with Lord Robertson, the military alliance's secretary-general, Powell said that while weighing options ``we have not got to the point of actual U.S. participation in such an effort.'' Other NATO allies have made preliminary commitments. Powell said ``there are many ways in which we can make a contribution.'' But, ``it has not gone any further than that in terms of our deliberations.'' In Skopje, meanwhile, Macedonia's ethnic Albanians and Slavs restarted stalled talks that could clear the way for NATO troops to help disarm rebels in the Balkan country and prevent a full-scale war. Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general, made an unscheduled stop in Skopje on his way to the Mideast a day after President Boris Trajkovski declared negotiations on his peace plan at an impasse. Powell said he and Robertson ``are hopeful a political process will start to pick up some speed and momentum and move forward.'' Asked if the United States would contribute troops to a peacekeeping operation in the event of a truce, Powell signaled a probable positive response. ``We were part of the consensus that said it was appropriate for NATO military authorities to come up with a conceptual plan for putting troops in if a political arrangement came into being that would allow weapons to be turned in and picked up.'' With nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in the Balkans and a newly made promise to the allies to stay the course, President Bush's policy is evolving into one of maintaining a united allied front in the countries created by the breakup of Yugoslavia. ``We're involved militarily. We are involved politically. We're involved diplomatically,'' Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday. And White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush supports NATO's decision to help Macedonia bring about disarmament and expressed the support last week during meetings with allied leaders in Belgium. ``We hope that the political parties in Skopje can reach an agreement quickly,'' Fleischer said. There already are 700 U.S. troops in Macedonia, ``and they at some point could become part of that process,'' Powell said Wednesday. Most are there to provide logistical support for 5,400 U.S. peacekeeping troops in neighboring Kosovo, the mostly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia. The United States also has 3,800 peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bush administration's stand on sending U.S. troops to the Balkans and keeping those sent there by former President Clinton has been uneven. During the presidential campaign, adviser Condoleezza Rice said the U.S. peacekeeping role should be reconsidered. Powell has insisted the U.S. troops would stay the course with the NATO allies, but the Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently said peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and the Middle East were straining U.S. resources. ARTICLE 4 Panels Are Missing The Crux of The Problems: Leadership Ed.: From the many letters I received from junior officers and experienced NCOs it seems apparent that one issue remains untouched: Leadership improvement. A Deeply Concerned Air Force Officer I am an Air Force officer and I was dismayed by reading a Washington Post article reporting on the results of one of the "expert" panels that Secretary Rumsfeld commissioned. It looks like they decided that the requirement for a 20-year career before retirement and the up or out promotion system are the problems. There was no mention in the article of the leadership problems across the services, or the fact that company grade officers who hunger for responsibility and the opportunity to exercise real leadership and make a difference, aren't given that chance, for all the reasons that I see reported here every week. The vast majority of the officers I started with 7 years ago are all out now, working at jobs for companies that do give them responsibility, with a much-reduced level of BS. It’s not even completely a question of money, even though they did end up making more working on the outside. The change to retirement looks suspicious to me, a lot like the new 15-year bonus, which turns out to be a lot less money than traditional retirement when you run the numbers. As for up or out, the promotion rate now is so high (90% to major in the Air Force) that anyone who is breathing and has a commission can make a full 20 years anyway! I just can't figure where they are coming from. I haven't seen the full report, or know where to find it, but I will be interested to find out if the newspaper article on it was accurate. I just got back from a overseas deployment. Each of the Army Captains that I met during our deployment "readiness" processing said that they were getting out as soon as they got back, in part because everyone they ever worked for would have pushed them in front of a speeding bus if it led to career enhancement. A Sergeant, who showed me how to put together my TA-50 (not part of Air Force training) was also getting out after his deployment. He was tired of being deployed constantly. I also heard a story of the Brown and Root Services regional manager thanking Gen Meigs for providing such an incredible pool of highly trained potential employees to his company...by not providing them enough responsibility in the Army. Unfortunately, I wasn't there so I can't really say what happened. I had high hopes for the new administration, and these panels possibly provide a way to highlight debate on the real problems. I have heard of two Army Command and Staff college studies on the retention problem in the Army - the first gave honest results, and for the second, the student groups were given instructions on what the "correct" results of their papers would be. I would like to see SFTT provide some input and a position on this retention study. It would also be helpful if the newsletter published locations on the web where these studies could be found. I greatly appreciate the depth and breadth of subjects that SFTT deals with. It continues to show me that there are people who understand and care about what happens. ARTICLE 5 Aircraft Programs Need Help Ed.: Several suggestions to alleviate obvious problems. Is anyone listening to those who do the flying? By a Military Aviator Kill Osprey, the cost vs. capability has been exceeded. They should buy a Fairey Rotodyne type design modernized to fill our needs. It does nearly everything that Osprey does a whole lot safer. The only reason it hasn't happened is that the patents all ran out and there is no huge profits to be made on it. USMC Air has been flawed for years. They needed a carrier based A-10, they got the Harrier...you can carry ordnance to do the job or fuel to get there but never both at the same time. Buy the S-92 Helibus instead of overpriced Hueys and carry 2x the troops at the same price and be compatible with every other services H-60 series aircraft. F-18EF is robbing all the other programs blind, our T-34Cs are 20 years old based on a 50 year old design yet the Texan II is now pushed back 7-10 more years and we are stuck with converting to a training program we won't be able to use until then. Ultimately our aviation industry is a wreck. The way we contract, design and build aircraft is not working, always late and over budget. Time to take some of these folks with technical degrees and when they rotate to shore duty, they go to design aircraft, we dictate them, then we subcontract them directly. That isn't likely to happen. What we need is Congress to fund stuff without pork barreling it and demanding absolute adherence to contract. A few foreign buys might even be the answer to wake up the industry. Enough ranting, it is time for the 0-6 and above "politicians" to take the 0-3's seriously. Congress needs to do the right thing, not the popular thing and keep their hands in their pockets. ARTICLE 6 No Room For Warriors Ed.: In response to one of our recent pieces, in which senior troops lamented the loss of the warrior ethos. A US Army Officer RIGHT ON TARGET! The good chief has his head on straight. He was right about soldiers running in battle. I experienced this first hand in Bosnia (not a shooting war mind you) when soldiers did not want to follow me to disarm civilians. I punished them. Also, women and hair -- right on! I received a document in the email from a female officer I respect. She outlined all the regulations pertaining to females into a "leaders guide" in the hope that ALL leaders would help her enforce the standards for females. We need more like her. I recently received an email sent out by Jack Tilley, SMA, to other SGMs. It basically called our dislike of the berets a leadership failure to educate. Sorry, Jack, but re-education stinks of communism. He tried in his memo to link the reshaping of the Army (bringing LAVs on-board and killing off M1s) with the logical progression to berets. It was a convoluted memo and his best attempt to toe the party line of his boss. It was, in a nutshell, a bunch of crap! I cannot wait to retire. I have 17 years in and look forward to doing something else. The problem stems from the Army's desire to rid itself of warriors and replace the ranks with YES MEN. 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