Brick-a-BRAC
from The Note:
The Washington Post's Ann Scott Tyson wraps the first day of the BRAC hearings, during which members of the commission asked defense officials how the base closings would affect National Guard and reserve recruiting and retention, and whether the plan to close 62 major bases is premature because it comes before the completion of the Pentagon's quadrennial review of strategy and the look at military transportation capabilities. LINK.John Hendren of the Los Angeles Times writes that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urged the panel not to mess with the Pentagon's recommendations. LINK.
Jerry Miller of the Manchester Union Leader describes how Maine and New Hampshire officials banded together yesterday with Portsmouth Naval Shipyard employees, beseeching BRAC to negate the Pentagon's recommendation of closure. LINK.
How they (two congressional delegations) plan to make an effective case without making the case that Rumsfeld's permanent War Against the Rull (see the extended for that detour in sense and sensibilities) is (a) hollowing out the Army (active and reserve components) and (b) turning the Fleet from an instrument of policy into the Saudi coast guard, is a head-into-lamppost. To make that case several of them will have to conspire to strangle the current regime's Monk Ratsputin, or die by the Union Leader.
The War Against the Rull
Our hero is Trevor Jamieson, chief scientist of the Interstellar Military Commission, on the front lines of humanity's war with a shape-shifting race of insectoid aliens known as the Rull.
Jamieson may have found the key to victory, but first he must simply survive--marooned on a wild, hostile planet with a 6,000-pound, blue-furred, six-legged, human-hating telepathic bear, Jamieson escapes only to find himself trapped days later in a meteor-carved cave with a woman who wants him dead, armed with only a knife and his wits against a blood-thirsty giant weasel that can claw through solid rock.