Inside the Headquarters

Hawaii’s Sen. Dan Inouye is a member of a dying breed, or rather breeds. He represents more than one group whose numbers are rapidly decreasing. Inouye, a decorated World War II veteran, is now the longest serving member in Congress and third in line to succession to the Oval Office.

Inouye came home to the islands and served as grand marshal of the very kitschy, small-town Kona Fourth of July Parade. (He was not spotted kissing babies.) It has been reported joining him were approximately 20 of his World War II brethren. They say there once would have been hundreds. Inouye served with the 442nd Regiment Combat Team, the Nisei, a unit of Japanese-Americans. 

You may have heard of the 442nd RCT and thought. “Ok,” as we did. We learned from Hawaiian history buffs that this unit is sacred to the people of Hawaii. In fact, take sacred up several factors and you approach the importance of the 442nd to our off-shore citizens.

Though Inouye has clocked 51 years on the Hill, military veterans serving in Congress are dying breed. At its high point in 1977-1978, 77 percent of members had military service. Today that number is just 21 percent.

Inouye was born in Honolulu in 1924.  One biography says he came to the aid of the wounded during the Pearl Harbor attack. He would have been just 17. In 1943 he enlisted in the Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team.  A battlefield commission led to command of a platoon. He lost his right arm leading an attack against a German machine gun nest. His wounds landed him in a hospital for nearly two years. Of his many awards, his Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Blue Max (Medal of Honor) in 2000. When Hawaii achieved statehood in 1959, he was one of its first representatives. He has served ever since.

Where there were once a reported 10,000, the Nisei now number an estimated 400 to 600 living in the Hawaiian Islands. This living history will be relegated to books and film during the next two or three decades.

There is a bill to grant to Congressional Gold Medal to the 100th Battalion and the 442nd RCT. It passed the House and has been in a Senate committee since May 2009. |

Wonder what Sen. Inouye will do about that?

If it’s mid-year it must be Supplemental Time.

This year, instead of the services trawling Capitol Hill for dollars to fund the war effort, Defense Secretary (and Occasional Super Hero) Robert M. Gates has told lawmakers “We need $33 billion by July 4.” The Senate passed its bill in late May, but the House shifted its efforts to education and Medicaid funding. This may sound ridiculous to the Tony Soprano arm of defense funding, but large segments of voters have interest in these programs over war funding.

Gates warned lawmakers that without this money, the Defense Department would have to do “stupid things.” (We assume these are different from the stupid things that have become routine.) Gates threats included employee furloughs, disruption of Pentagon programs and an inability to pay uniformed members. (Not that DoD offered to look at cutting the many questionable offices established in the past decade or two.) Maybe the services will have to forego pay raises. We don’t sense Gates is will willing to make too many sacrifices in those areas.

Congress is aware there is trouble in paradise, stateside and abroad. Weapons systems costs continue to spiral out of control. Procurement fights are ongoing. Then there is the matter of the delay of the Kandahar offensive. Gen. Stanley “Rolling Stone” McChrystal, former head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said he was having some problems with local support. And oh, by the way, it would be a bloody summer.

Though the administration is not looking at troop reduction there until 2011, members of Congress must have concerns over sending good money after bad. (It is an election year. It is American taxpayer money.) Representatives are angling for their districts, as they should. Plow another plane into the Pentagon, and Gates will have their attention.

But lawmakers are stuck. They will have to approve the supplemental, and that’s unfortunate. Every year it is promised that next year will be different, but it remains the same. The same dance with Congress approving the plus-up. Could this be extorting money from the American people? When will someone say, “Whoa?”

The Senate Armed Services Committee has reversed a long-standing ban on performing abortions in overseas military medical facilities.

Let the protests resume!

Such emotionally charged controversies like this are rare, but we’ve got a hot one here, ladies and gentlemen, and one with quite a history.

Before the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, the U.S. military was performing abortions in military medical facilities.

When the U.S. stopped the federal funding of abortions in the late 1970s, the procedure ceased in stateside military facilities. Eventually abortions were stopped overseas, with those on either side of the issue deeply divided. The rules prohibiting abortions in military facilities were formalized in 1985.

Less than a decade later, political leaders quietly allowed women to have privately funded abortions in military facilities. This 1993 initiative never really accomplished what supporters had hoped. The word was doctors refused to perform them, but who really knows? In 1995 the ban was reinstated, but it now made exceptions for the unholy trinity of rape, incest and life of the mother, though the first two had to be funded privately. (Are not all fetuses created equal or does this approach judge the morals of the pregnant military female? Inquiring minds.)

Fast forward to the present. An amendment to a defense bill was passed by a vote of 15-12 allowing privately funded abortions in overseas military facilities. Some report the final bill faces a filibuster in the full Senate. The House bill did not contain this provision, and its defense bill has already passed. If the Senate bill passes their version of the defense bill with the amendment, the two houses will reconcile their differences later this summer. House lawmakers have introduced similar legislation year after year, only to see it die in committee.

It is interesting that while abortion remains legal in the United States, a privately funded procedure (funding the physician, procedure room, anesthetics, etc.), is not permitted in federal facilities. Is there a lawsuit lurking? The Senate proposal seems reasonable, fair and within the law.

Our guess is a law permitting abortions in overseas military medical facilities will not pass. Lawmakers’ priority this year seems to be the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law governing the service of homosexuals in the military.

Another guess: Lawmakers will sacrifice service women’s access to this legal procedure to garner DADT votes.

As it does each year, Congress determines the pay raises for military personnel. Over the past 12 years, most have been substantial, meant to keep pace with the civilian sector compensation.

It seems lawmakers are scrounging for dollars and the Defense Department is a rich target. What Congress giveth in billions for personnel and equipment, Congress can taketh away. Need quick cash? Just call D-O-D.

Lawmakers are a little late, and it seems they will not go far enough.

It has been reported that the U.S. accounts for nearly half the world’s defense spending. Defense personnel costs (and this figure varies with who’s reporting and how it’s calculated) run 20 percent to around half the defense budget. For 2010 of roughly $533 billion, personnel costs are tagged at $136 billion.

Not bad, but factor in healthcare and other support and the cost skyrockets. Lawmakers can cut as many Army weapons programs as it wants (and it is) and cough up a hairball at the mention of modernizing the Navy and the CNO’s fuzzy math, everyone seems to have lost control of defense personnel costs.

The effectiveness of the “pay-them-and-they-will-stay” model has been as costly as it is questionable. Even with an economic downturn, poor civilian job prospects and recruiting and retention numbers off the charts, lawmakers have approved fat raises across the board. These pay hikes probably have been unnecessary. Hindsight? Hardly. People are paid to study this stuff, and decades of data probably point to similar trends. Does a 3 percent pay increase tip the scales in the “Do I stay or do I go?” rumba? The answer is probably “No.”

Below are pay raises over the past decade:

Virginia Sen. Jim “Women Can’t Fight” Webb, chairman of the Senate armed services personnel subcommittee, has been looking closely at this vexing issue. He sees the pay raises as having been inefficient and a major culprit in driving up personnel costs. Webb and his committee are looking at vectoring the money into incentive pay.

Webb is going for pennies when “C” notes are needed. Sure pay hikes need to go, but so do those plus-ups of thousands in uniform. The legions of reservists serving on the public dole cost a lot of money and many need to go. DoD personnel costs are out of control thanks in large part to complex mismanagement of personnel on many levels. Fat pay raises are but a symptom.

Our enemies (and our friends) like nothing more than to see the U.S. bleed green. It may be a significant threat to national security, and someone has to apply the tourniquet.

The measure to change the Department of the Navy to the “Department of the Navy and Marine Corps” has passed another milestone.
The House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill sponsored by North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones. HR 24 had an astounding 425 co-sponsors.

Jones and others considered this bill to be the clichéd “no brainer,” calling it a simple gesture about respect. After all, it is just a name change and why shouldn’t the Marine Corps get the respect some believe it deserves?

The Senate seems to think otherwise. Two opposed to Jones’ bill reportedly are Arizona Sen. John McCain and Virginia Sen. Jim “Women Can’t Fight” Webb.

Our guess is that the two Vietnam heroes (and Naval Academy grads, we might add) understand something about history, respect, decorum and the potential unnecessary upheaval of the change. They certainly understand the increased (and unwanted) responsibility this could heap upon the unprepared Marine Corps, a Gun Club that’s good at winning battles but challenged in other areas. Webb is a former Navy secretary, though he only served 10 short months until he stormed off the job, but that’s another topic.

The often contentious relationship between the two sea services has become legendary. While the Navy did ditch its Marine brethren at Guadalcanal (please watch “The Pacific”), the Department of the Navy has provided a safe haven for its little brother, a boy better suited to beach landings than the administrative realities of running a war department. Despite a number of self-inflicted wounds, the U.S. Navy has built and runs the most powerful navy in the world. In contrast it took the Marine Corps nearly 25 years to secure a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Would giving them the departmental title help? Maybe. A little.

As mentioned in an earlier post, a Department of the Marine Corps would have to become a functioning Department of the Marine Corps. (The legislation is brief and does not delineate duties.) The many responsibilities the Navy has been covering would probably go over to the new department, which means new people and tremendous responsibility for the Marines in short order. While the Corps might pull it off, it would take the boys away from their core (read: sole) competency – war.

The Senate’s version of the bill, S 504, has four co-sponsors and was introduced by Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts during February 2009. It has been in committee since its introduction. Our guess— it’s dead, which means the push for a departmental name change may be over, at least for another year. (Longer if we’re lucky.)

Defense Secretary (and Former Super Hero) Robert M. Gates has announced policy changes for retired military leaders working as mentors for the services.

An outline of the revised program was reported by USA Today, the same outlet that “broke” the sordid mentor (non) tale.

The new policy purports to balance “the military’s desire to tap the wisdom of its former leaders ‘with the need to hire such experts in a manner that promotes public trust and confidence,’ says a Pentagon fact sheet sent to lawmakers.”
The guidelines that cover retired senior officers who provide guidance during war games and other military exercises were cobbled together in a matter of months, possibly indicating strong congressional interest. Civilian control of the military is crucial; congressional strong-arming of the defense secretary is of questionable value.

Judging from informal discussions with some of the mentors and mentored, sure these guys get paid, but the mentors we saw at a recent war game probably had better and more lucrative things to do. It seems many of these retired leaders sign up as mentors because they are good at it. We don’t sense the “Scam Uncle Sam” vibe.

Gates says he is going to lower rates the mentors are paid, though no details were available. (Reportedly some are compensated in the $400/hour range.) Overall, Gates’ guidelines appear vague and broad. One states that mentors cannot “… participate in matters in which they have a conflict of interest, defined in federal law as taking official action that has ‘a direct and predictable effect’ on their personal interests.”

Conflict of interest seems to be the panic button. But the mentors could glean better defense industry scoop from their friends leading top units or those on the Joint Staff than from most mentor gigs.

For mentors, the guidelines may prove a hassle. Some may leave the program; many probably will stay. Having sat through one day of a war game, if that mess did not send these guys running for the exits, Gates probably can’t deter them.

Harassing mentors (and those who need their services) provides no solution to a non-problem. Aren’t there more pressing concerns?

In recent testimony before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli seemed to meander his way around the future of Army modernization. He knew there was a problem, but like many of his colleagues and predecessors could not succinctly articulate the Army’s needs, its vision and the “why” behind it all.

A number of years ago in its plan to transform its units and organize for combat, the Army outlined a very clear, albeit bizarre, modernization strategy. They gave it a name – Future Combat Systems. It was made up of all kinds of stuff – 18 systems ranging from wheeled vehicles to unmanned aerial systems. Lots of good stuff.

That was the beginning of the end. Eighteen systems screamed “Cut me!” to Congress. The situation was made worse in how most Army officials explained the tangle, “Eighteen, plus one, plus one.” (Huh?) Well, one plus-one was the “network” into which all these systems ideally would plug. The second plus-one was the soldier. When weaknesses in this thinking were highlighted, the defensive retort often pointed to the Navy, “Well they get ships with a lot of systems.” (Yes, they do. And they can articulate their needs.)

The Army was adamant — that is, until it panicked. It began to cut FCS. Well, they could cut a wheeled vehicle or two because they had others that could do the job, and a UAV could go because there were more to take on those duties.
It was little surprise that Congress cut from there. In a short period FCS was eviscerated.

Few, other than the former deputy chief of staff for Army programs, Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes talked about “Army Modernization” (which is exactly what FCS was) in terms the Hill and the public could embrace. Had the modernization been couched correctly, our guess is a viable program (albeit smaller than originally planned) would be in place today.

As reported, the Army has reason to worry. It blew a solid plan to avoid the material mess in which it now finds itself.

Virginia senator and Man-about-Oktoberfest Jim “Women Can’t Fight” Webb http://webb.senate.gov/ has proposed what has been on the minds of bar flies for years: “Ditch the antidepressants and pass me a cold one.”

The suggestion is typical of the 1968 Naval Academy graduate, who is lauded by some for his performance as a Marine in the all-but-forgotten tussle in Vietnam.

We are not anti alcohol, but we are anti Webb. It was during hearings before the Senate Armed services’ personnel subcommittee, which Webb now heads, that he learned servicemembers in theater are medicated with antidepressants and other drugs for mental maladies.

Webb agreed with leaders that the force is under stress and gave his solution: get rid of the meds, lift the drinking ban in theater and let them drink to relieve stress.

We agree with Webb. The drinking ban is ridiculous. But replacing prescription medication with alcohol (as a means of self-medication as Webb appears to suggest) is a bad idea. This is the man who railed against the presence of women at his precious academy and quit as Navy secretary after 10 months because he did not get the funding he wanted. Are defense drinking guidelines his latest cause? He may have the force of 2010 confused with that of the late ‘60s when, if the lore and B movies are accurate, self-medication was the rule.

We also agree with Webb’s concerns about meds at the front. There was a time when those suffering from mental health concerns would be sent packing, and it has been reported many still are. But it seems you may have individuals who may or may not take their medication sporting the latest firepower. While this probably is not a good idea, liquoring them up like the supporting cast in a John Wayne flick (or Webb novel) may not be the way to go either. What Webb may have been getting at (and we hate to agree with him again) is command climate. Life in a war zone isn’t the greatest, so why not give those who serve some normalcy. Webb sees that in an occasional brewski. Our guess is this crowd self-medicates at home, so why break the routine?

Here’s to you senator, and to the Men of Genius like you. Deceased Pennsylvania congressman John “Blurtha” Murtha would be proud.

The Marine Corps seems to have it own Tea Party movement: There is a bill in the House of Representatives to rename the “Department of the Navy” to the “Department of the Navy and Marine Corps.” While it might garner some additional awareness for the Boys’ Gun Club, proponents of the change seek parity with the Navy.

But there’s a down side to this equalizer, and bill backers don’t seem to see the Marine Corps may lose more than it gains.

The Marine Corps and the Navy both fall under the Department of the Navy. That top cover has been a sweet deal for the Marines. Equal footing could cost the Marine Corps people and money. The lean Marine Corps? No more! The Navy Department is saddled with tremendous administrative responsibilities, many the Corps has been able to avoid.

Legal and contracting are just two areas that could shift resources away from Corps Commandant Gen. James T. “Not in My Corps” Conway’s precious (and simple) priorities. Do movement supporters know what ball-and-chain possibly awaits? If we were the Navy, we’d say, “Great. Here’s the table of organization and required funding. You get the cubes in the basement. Welcome aboard.”

Point man of this assault on the Hill is North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones whose district includes sprawling Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune. Joining him is former Corps commandant Gen. Al “Only When There’s Trouble” Gray and Gen. Anthony Zinni, former CENTCOM chief. Also involved are the Marine Corps Mafia (uh, League) and the Marine Parents Association.(Who?).  Star power comes in the form of R. Lee Ermey, a Marine Corps veteran and cable TV host who played the drill instructor (shot and killed by a recruit) in the movie “Full Metal Jacket.”

The bill, HR 24, has 370 cosponsors and was introduced in January 6, 2009. It appears it has been in committee since. Senate bill S 504 has two cosponsors and remains in committee. Though these bills may be going nowhere, this group may want to rethink its oddly placed priorities. Proponents of the change are whining the well-worn “recognition for our sacrifices” refrain. We believe they were paid for their service and already receive tremendous credit. We would hope they move on, otherwise the Boys’ Gun Club may become a bit less expeditionary.

Pennsylvania Congressman John Murtha slipped away without fanfare February 8 at a Northern Virginia Hospital from complications following gall bladder surgery.

Better known as the King of Pork than for his Marine Corps roots, Murtha was our target for good-natured comments here at Inside the Headquarters. “Live like no one is watching” is what we will take away from John Murtha, though we think the venerable lawmaker lived like everyone was watching for the sake of the people he represented.

Murtha’s stated opposition to the Iraq war was a mere distraction from his role as power broker and wheeler-dealer. This Earl of Earmarks brought federal funds and jobs to his beloved Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Murtha is said to be the first Vietnam combat veteran to serve in Congress, elected in 1974. His Marine Corps service started during the Korean War, after which he joined the reserves. He is said to have volunteered for active duty in 1966 and headed off to Vietnam. He received two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

Murtha had seemed especially cantankerous of late where the military services were concerned. We preferred to call him “Blurtha” because we never knew what he might toss out next. Was he the consummate, calculating, Crazy-Like-a-Fox of the House?

We have written about John Murtha 12 times since October 2007 and could have penned volumes. We started with his out-of-the-blue criticism of the U.S. Africa Command. His harsh remarks about Marine actions at Haditha, Iraq, an incident that left 24 Iraqis and one Marine dead, fell just short of accusing U.S. forces of massacring innocent civilians.

On the lighter side was Murtha’s unabashed love of spending tax payer money. As chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Murtha dispensed many a defense dollar, and steered much of it to his economically challenged district. He was the friend of lobbyists and union bosses and established his own military-industrial complex at home in Johnstown – funded courtesy of the taxpayer. He was even ready to take on the controversial Guantanamo Bay detainees – and the jobs and money that would come along with them.

John Murtha leaves behind his wife of 55 years, a daughter, two sons and three grandchildren. He also leaves behind a district. Though the 12th District of Pennsylvania had been moving away from him in recent years, it will certainly feel the loss.