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| On Defense: DoD Using Cold War Criteria |
March 02, 2004 |
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Dear Friends,
When the Under Secretary of Defense for installations showed up for a hearing at the Armed Services Committee last Thursday, he can`t have been expecting an easy afternoon, and he didn`t get one.
His staff had come up the previous day to explain to members why every single one of hundreds of recommendations concerning the criteria to be used for the next round of base closure was ignored.
DOD`s draft criteria were almost unchanged from those they used during the Cold War. I assumed that they were using the old criteria as a starting point and bringing them into the 21st century (and folding in the lessons learned from the last BRAC) during the public comment period. Nope.
In my questioning, I asked the Under Secretary why they had ignored the General Accounting Office recommendation that cost savings should be calculated for the government as a whole -- not just DOD. The intention is to find cost savings, not cost shifting.
Of course, I had in mind one of their biggest mistakes in the last round of base closure -- Kirtland. The Air Force might have saved money by shedding their role as mayor of Kirtland. The nation wouldn`t have saved a dime. And Albuquerque had to jump through hoops to show where DOD had made its mistakes.
The Under Secretary didn`t have a good answer. In fact, he didn`t really have an answer at all. I had to interrupt him and ask him to please answer the question, to little effect.
I would much prefer that people prevent mistakes than have to recover from them.
So far, the Defense Department seems to be stuck in an old groove on BRAC and they aren`t listening to the most common sense suggestions. Their pride of authorship does not serve the country well.
Wish you were here,
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