A Balanced Strategy
The Pentagon has to do more than modernize its conventional forces; it must also focus on today's unconventional conflicts -- and tomorrow's.
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The fighting in Iraq has exposed the limits of Donald Rumsfeld's transformation agenda. The U.S. military remains underprepared for dealing with guerrillas, and such unconventional threats will grow in coming years. The next stage of military transformation must focus on training large numbers of infantry for nation building and irregular warfare--and Washington must make that task a top priority.
Uncertainty is necessarily the lot of the planner, since the deals with the future. Uncertainty can never be completely removed. However, it can be compensated for, and to do so is a continuing responsibility of those who plan military forces. Primarily this can be done by insuring, in so far as we can, that future weapons and forces will be adaptable to the right range of defense needs or, as defense planners often put it, by insuring flexibility.
Nineteen sixty-nine may be remembered as the year Americans woke up to the importance of an issue that was to be a dominant one in the 1970s. The question of Viet Nam still had the emotional clout. The great ABM debate still captured most of the headlines. But more and more people were beginning to see that bigger and more permanent than both of these was the question of whether America's military spending could be brought under more rational control. In the winter of 1969 it became increasingly clear that we had to find a way to reorient our national priorities so that imperative human needs on the home front were not always being shunted aside because of the claims of "national security." No longer could it be successfully argued that we could afford the needed amounts of "guns and butter." A difficult choice-or at least choices-had to be made, and would have to be made repeatedly, for many years to come.

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Tyranny or Democracy
Dear Mr. Gates
We, the US public, are concerned about the rapid loss of American's inallienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
As Pentagon Chief, you and only you have the potential ability to altar the history of American by ridding us of the tyranical Congress, Presidency and Supreme Court in their drive to destroy the Constitution and the American way of life. Before the president forms his own private army ( which Mr. Obama has openly stated as his brown shirt army) the Pentagon and the armed forces of the United States can act based on the second paragraph in the Declartion of Independence. The Constituion has been amended in order to change this country from Democracy to a tyrany like we have not known in the several hundred years of existence. Thomas Jefferson states in part (paragraph 2 of the Declartion of Independence).
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --"
Please save this country from tyrany for the Armed US forces can "throw off this govement, and to provide a new guard for the US citizens security."
You, your progeny and all Americans are in danger. I speak knowing that the current government will be looking over my shoulder because this puts their evil plans in jeopardy.
Thank you thinking carefully what you have the ppower to do in the history of the United States.
Reply
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
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Reply
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
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The United States cannot
The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, do everything, and buy everything. The Pentagon must set priorities and consider tradeoffs. It must balance trying to prevail in today's conflicts and preparing for tomorrow's, institutionalizing counterinsurgency capabilities, and maintaining its edge in conventional warfare.
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The govt has been amended in
The govt has been amended in order to change this country from Democracy to a tyrany like we have not known in the several hundred years of existence.
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