-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Soldiers For The Truth Defending America Newsletter Situation Report - 07 March 2001 "Where is the Vision?" TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS SITREP From The President Through Zman’s Gun Sight - Where is the Vision? HACK’s Target For The Week - Say It Isn’t So The Big Picture: Article 1 - Nat'l Guard Teams Found Unprepared Article 2 - Bush concerned over Chinese aid to Iraq Article 3 - US crews Involved in Colombian Battle Voice of the Grunt: Article 4 - Many Awards aren’t Earned Article 5 - Tomorrow's Army, "Interact, Build Trust" Article 6 - Air Force: We’re working like every day is a day at War Article 7 - Navy: Too much Show and not much Substance Article 8 - First Give-away Berets, now free Aviation Badges The Sergeant’s Corner: Article 9 - The Truth about Guard & Reserve Readiness Article 10 - Special Ops: Officers are driving the Critical NCOs out Article 11 - TRICARE - The Beat Goes On! Article 12 - Whistleblower complaint yields $2 million Update Special Report: - Black Beret Protest Closes on Washington G.I Humor: Article 13 - Tire Change brings College Credits Medal of Honor: Article 14 - Col. Hiram I. Bearss, USMC, Philippines, 1902 Admin / Log Editors Note Subscribe and Unsubscribe Information Printer Friendly Text Only Version SITREP: SITUATION REPORT: 07 MARCH 2001 A. Main topics: 1) Defense Vision 2) Retention 3) Guard Readiness 4) Awards and Decorations 5) Quality of Life B. HOT BUTTONS: * Better Comms!!! Well…we tried to overcome the technical difficulties you’ve experienced with the website and created new ones during the last mailing. We apologize for the double and triple mailing and especially for some of the duplicate messages to Z, including some not so polite ones. Aren’t you glad you aren’t Zimm, Woody or Marv? Please remember that we’re not a multi million $$$$ outfit like AUSA and others and that a handful of volunteers are fighting this high tech battle. We promise to do better in the future and hope you are still with us. * Question of the Week: Do you believe that the new President will be able to solve our crisis in National Defense? Will he be able to address the right priorities? !!! Feel free to send me hot topics directly if you can’t get through the admin/log net -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] . * Keep the mail coming!!! We won’t reveal your true identity unless you give us your approval. We know how vindictive the "system" is. * WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT 2000. EVERY DOLLAR MAKES A DIFFERENCE. THANK YOU to all SFTT warriors who are sending bucks for fuel ammo and beans. * How you can help: !!! Credit Card donation via our WEBSITE at www.sftt.org. !!! If you think we HIT a target, forward the newsletter to TV, radio and your local papers. YOU are the frontline recruiters and intel gatherers for SFTT. Check or Money order: Send to and make payable to: Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-3840. Important: Your donation is tax deductible! SFTT is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit educational foundation, IRS # 31-1592564. If you send us an E-MAIL address with your donation we can immediately mail you a RECEIPT. Multiple contributions: Please remind us when you submit your donation. We will send you a cumulative statement. Prepare for Action -- "Crew Ready! -- LOAD SABOT - DRIVER MOVE OUT!" R.W. Zimmermann President SFTT E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Zman Through Zman’s Gun Sight Where is the Vision? By R.W. (Zimm) Zimmermann President, Soldiers For The Truth SFTT Dateline USA - 7 March 2001 Listening to the President in his address to Congress and reading the latest about our military in transformation, I’m asking myself where is the real vision beyond the service boundaries? A senseless competition for tax dollars still encompasses all the services, mainly motivated by the desire to protect jobs, leader promotions and questionable weapons. To save the services from themselves, the President and the Defense Department must reinvent the entire military within the next four years. Our Army needs help especially, since it is blindly following a course that espouses the ideas of former NATO Commander, "Sir" Wesley Clark, who in a publicized speech last year proclaimed, "The Army must change its mindset and be more aggressive in going after expeditionary missions, unless it wants to lose out to the other services in the fight for defense dollars…you’ve got to want the missions, if you don’t get the missions, you don’t get the resources." With this compete-for-any-mission philosophy, you have to question what the Army’s celebrated transformation is really all about. Has General Shinseki swallowed the notion that peacekeeping and peace enforcement, not war-fighting, are the norm for future conflicts? Taking this direction, the Army is now challenging the US Marine Corps to a budget race that won’t help readiness and is wasteful for the taxpayer. Duplicating organizations and equipment will result in operational and strategic overkill. The Marines are by experience and training ideally suited for a "forced entry" into a hostile environment. Weaker logistics and equipment constraints however don’t allow the Marines to operate long-term and deep against sophisticated enemy resistance. No doubt, the nation needs light forces specialized for the "forced entry" and peace enforcement missions. These forces include the Army’s airborne and air assault divisions and the Marine amphibious forces. All these agile strike units should be combined under a single command. Allowing for complementary capabilities, the Army should exploit the operational spectrum with its heavy and medium forces. The Army picks up where the Marines stop and "drives" deep into enemy territory to finish the war. The medium and heavier forces, fielding a spectrum of armored vehicles from LAV to medium weight tanks and capable for deeper operations (300 km inland), would fall under the total Army, a combination of active and reserve components. The Army’s basic unit would be a medium combat Brigade with no more than 5,000 personnel, properly packaged for fast air and sea deployments. The active force structure should also include three fully packaged aviation combat brigades, configured for deployment from Navy carriers. For complementary effect, the combined reserve would field the heavier forces deployed for the clear purpose of fighting longer term conflicts that require going deep, taking and holding ground. The Air Force should assume air and space operations as an Air and Space Force, with space being a defined branch, equal to fighter, transportation, missile, and electronic warfare branches. The Air and Space Force would transfer air-ground aircraft, such as the A-10, to the Army’s aviation brigades, thereby boosting the Army’s capabilities to fight low to medium intensity conflicts with more responsive air support. The Navy will continue as the primary power projection service, supporting the landing and sustainment of strike and expeditionary forces. It will also play a critical part in the defense against medium range ballistic missiles. What’s the obstacle? None of the transformations can succeed without personnel reform and that’s where the new President and his defense gurus have to show some backbone. The new forces can only become reality with highly elite, fit and trained volunteers. Pay raises, mainly benefiting the upper echelons won’t recruit and retain that elite. What’s also required is a purge of outdated thinkers and go-along careerists, together with a change of philosophy to transform military schools from institutions of mind control to think tanks, encouraging innovation. Field units and staffs must become less rank heavy to allow flexibility in decision-making and to forestall micromanagement. Senior NCOs and junior officers can then assume more responsibilities while getting better pay and compensations for each year in service. Mr. Rumsfeld has a wonderful opportunity to rebuild and redefine our forces to become much more lethal and efficient than the Cold War junkyard of today. But will he have the courage to exorcise the old, "what’s in it for me spirits" that spook the halls of the five-sided wind tunnel? © R.W. Zimmermann, LandserUSA [EMAIL PROTECTED] Note: This article is copyrighted by the author and requires his approval for other than newsletter further dissemination. HACK HACK’s Target For The Week Say It Isn’t So By David Hackworth The word in Porkapolis USA is that senior Marine officers have been doing what many Army, Navy and Air Force generals and admirals have done since those milicrats slapped on their stars -- cooked the books on a new weapons system. The program: the USMC V-22 Osprey helicopter. There's no arguing that our nation's premier 911 force needs to replace its worn-out helicopter fleet. Or that for the past two decades, top Marine brass have fought for the Osprey -- a reputedly magic bird that's supposed to cruise like an airplane and hover like a helicopter -- with the same intensity the Corps has always slugged it out on land, sea and air since that proud institution was formed. Nor is there any question of late about the fate of that hybrid aircraft: If it doesn't get its act together quick smart, it'll be flying though heavy flak fired by a turned-off Congress and a shoot-down-that-loser Bush/Cheney White House. So despite all the Osprey crashes -- which since 1991 have killed 30 Marines -- countless megabytes of U.S. Marine, Boeing Aircraft and Bell Helicopter hype have been devoted to making the troubled aircraft perform on paper even if it's not flying so well in the sky. After all, we're looking at a $40 billion chunk of military appropriations. And even inside the capital beltway, this is serious money. Last month, the Corps fired V-22 Squadron test-unit skipper Lt. Col. Odin Leberman for ordering his Marines to falsify records. The case was open-and-shut. A brave Marine who wanted to stop the crashing and dying recorded Leberman saying to make that sucker look good. Our patriot then shotgunned the audiotape to the Pentagon inspector general and to the media. But unless their name is Oliver North, Marine lieutenant colonels have no power in the big scheme of military maneuvers and would never try to save a troubled program on their own hook. So who on high told Leberman to make it happen? And if the colonel, who's looking at hard slammer-time, gets immunity, will he sing or will he take the rap to save others up the chain of command? Now comes the fallout as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's inspectors examine two senior Marine generals' computers, dig through thousands of documents and interview hundreds of Marines and civilian technicians. The Marine Corps always seemed to be above the pork and politics and into doing the right thing. You know: hard soldiering, harder fighting, and duty, honor and country. My belief system would have trouble handling our Marines being into the same slippery stuff as the rest of the Pentagon services, i.e., ask not what your country can do for your service, but lie and cheat in order to steal a bigger bite of the defense buck than rival services. I grew up in a World War II Marine town -- Santa Monica, Calif. Young, brave Marines heading off to the Pacific were my role models. Because of them, I tried to enlist in the Corps in 1943, '44 and '45, always to be told, "Come back next year, kid, when you're a little bigger." In 1945, when I was 14, the Merchant Marines decided I was big enough -- and I missed my chance to join my dream team. Both in the Army and since, I've always had a special connection with the Marines. My boyhood awe was reinforced with the Corps' magnificent performance in Korea, where when my U.S. Army was retreating, the Marines were attacking. During the Vietnam War, I sent my paratroopers to the Marines to learn how to fight Charlie instead of staying with Army units who were still fighting Adolf and Tojo. More recently, while Clinton bombed our military with crippling social experiments, I reckoned it was only our Marines who stood tall and fought his Kinder Gentler tactics. So to this day, I've always admired Marine patriotism, honesty, true grit, dedication and good heart that's always put country and doing the right thing ahead of self. I hope the Pentagon inspector general draws a blank and gives the Corps a clean bill of health. If the I.G. doesn't, I doubt there will be anything Apple Pie left in America for our kids -- and you and me -- to believe in. David Hackworth's home page is at - http://www.hackworth.com Send mail to P.O. Box 5210, Greenwich, CT 06831. © 2001 David H. Hackworth. Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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