Last week in BRAC
Joe Lieberman has a piece in the op-ed page of the New York Post. He makes three points, fictional savings being the second. His first and third are "bad military policy" and "cripple an industry and workforce vital to our national defense and manufacturing competitiveness." Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, he didn't dot the eye or cross the tee of "bad military policy". He offered a "fast route to polar ice and the privotal Pacific" as a rational to keep the base, which Guam, Pearl and Bremerton beat, rather than a critique of downsizing the blue water fleet, submarines included, to pay for plusing up the brown water fleet, and abandonment of technical dominance in undersea warfare for lower cost stagnation, and abandonment of the North Atlantic sea lanes and engagement in Europe. Again, from my perspective, he failed to counter-attack, and is giving the Air Force a free ride to play at missile defense, warm holes in the ground, and make over-night runs from the mid-west to the mid-east to drop 18-wheeler-equivalents of drive-by shootings.
The NYTimes has a people-and-process story, which is fairly lame reporting after a week of BRAC hearing. To my non-credit I haven't had time to read the hearing testimony, then again, I'm not making an literal or figurative dime off of the BRAC, and those that are can drink to their success. The NYT piece is here.
I'll continue the Fishing in BRAC-ish Waters installments, then I'll stop bloging about defense policy. Its like bloging on Ashcroft and Ridge, minus an opposition.
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