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Washington Report
06/01/2005
June 2005
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PRESIDENT BUSH SIGNS $82 BILLION WAR SUPPLEMENTAL BILL
President George W. Bush signed into law the fiscal 2005 supplemental spending bill on May 11. The new legislation provides funding for the military’s expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for nonmilitary activities, such as tsunami disaster relief and increased border security.
Included in the legislation is funding for improvements to the death benefit package for survivors of fallen servicemembers. The bill was approved by the U.S. Senate the day before.
All troops would be authorized an increase in the maximum benefit under the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance program, raising it from $250,000 to $400,000.
The supplemental also increases the death gratuity benefit from $12,420 to $100,000; however, the increased gratuity will only be paid to survivors of military personnel who died in combat zones.
The increase would be retroactive to October 7, 2001, the date that military operations commenced in Afghanistan. The supplemental will expire on September 30. Whether the two-tiered gratuity will be revised after that is unknown.
CHAIRMAN OF JOINT CHIEFS NAMED
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was selected by President George W. Bush for the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first Marine to be so nominated. Upon Senate confirmation, Pace will succeed Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers in September.
The President also nominated Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani Jr. to serve as vice chairman. Giambastiani currently serves as the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command and as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, Transformation.
President Bush praised Myers, noting that on his watch, dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq were toppled and more than 50 million people were liberated.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Pace grew up in Teaneck, N.J., graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 and began his military career as a platoon leader in Vietnam at the Battle of Hue City in 1968. He has commanded at every level in the Marine Corps and also served in joint assignments. Before becoming vice chairman, he was the commander of U.S. Southern Command.
He was promoted to brigadier general in 1992 and served in the United States, Somalia and Japan before becoming the director for operations on the Joint Staff in 1996.
BRAC UPDATE
As we went to press, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission was preparing its list of bases that should be closed in the United States.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is scheduled to release the recommended base closure list. The commission will hold hearings and then must submit their recommendations to President Bush by September 8.
The President will then have until September 23 to approve or disapprove the list. If he approves, he will send the list to Congress, which will have 45 days to either accept or reject it. More information is available on the OSD BRAC web site (www.dod.mil/brac).
QDR REVIEWED
Strategy should drive the Army’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), Lt. Gen. David F. Melcher, the Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8, told a crowd at the AUSA Institute of Land Warfare Forum in Arlington, Va., on May 3. “It should not be the resource tail wagging the strategy dog.”
He reminded the audience that QDRs are not always perfect in planning the future. The 2001 QDR, for example, was poised before September 11, 2001, to give up two divisions. “Where would we be today,” he asked the audience, “if that had occurred?”
Gen. Melcher said that the Army has made good strides since 2001. He cited that the Army has fielded two Stryker brigade combat teams, uparmored more than 36,000 vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan, converted 11 brigades to modular brigades, and, through rapid fielding initiatives, has fielded and equipped, in 2004 alone, 184,000 soldiers with more than 3 million pieces of equipment.
“The Army’s portion of the QDR began about two years ago,” Melcher said, “when we decided to accelerate the transformation of the Army through the creation of the modular force.” Now the Department of Defense has designated four focus areas that aggressively respond to the range of strategic challenges that confront the military:
• Building partnerships to defeat terrorist extremism.
• Defending the homeland in-depth.
• Shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads.
• Preventing the acquisition or use of weapons of mass destruction by hostile state or non-state actors. |
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