WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a prelude to war! ***************************************************************** SOLDIERS FOR THE TRUTH "DEFENDING AMERICA NEWSLETTER" 03 May 2000 "When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen." General George Washington, New York Legislature, 1775 Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-3840 HTTP://WWW.SFTT.ORG ***************************************************************** TABLE OF CONTENTS SITREP Hack's Column: Article 1 -- Better Luck next Time "From my Position" -- On the way!" Article 2 - Slides R US Big Picture: Article 3 - What's Your Point, Lieutenant? Just Cut To the Pie Charts Article 4 -- Female General's Board Ties Questioned "VOICE OF THE GRUNT" Article 5 -- A real Leader - Thoughts about Gunfighter Emerson Article 6 -- "And So We Remember Vietnam (Cong Hoa)" Article 7 -- Navy Vets Get Back Into Uniform Article 8 - The Case for the V-22 Osprey Article 9 -- America, Home of the Fee? - Military / Veterans Health Care Update Article 10 - Recommended Readings for Peacekeepers G.I Humor: Article 11 -- The Barber Shop Medal of Honor: Article 12 -- *WILBANKS, HILLIARD A., Vietnam 1967 =============================================================== SITREP: 1. Main topics: 1) Vietnam -25 years after the fall of Saigon. Americans, by birth positive people, tend to tune it out as a No Winner. We sometimes forget that winners can become complacent and arrogant. Maybe we can learn from Vietnam if we educate our youth never to forget the lessons and that implementing the right fixes can make us a better Nation. 2) Slide Battles 3) Health Care Issues 4) Book recommendations. 2. Things we are looking for: · Power Point and marathon briefing stories from the front. 3. Thanks to all of you who have responded to our call to financial arms. We have so far collected enough money to keep us operational for the next 3 months. Hack and I estimate that we need about 100k to make us the voice and organization that will give us the clout we need. We still have a ways to go. Remember, AUSA alone has about a 20 million dollar budget. If you believe that we are the organization to speak for the troop on the ground, support us! 4. Methods of Support Check or Money order: Send to and make payable to: Soldiers For The Truth Foundation, PO Box 63840, Colorado Springs, CO 80962-3840. Credit card donation option via Website should be available by mid-May. Our site is at www.sftt.org. REMINDER: Your donation is tax deductible! SFTT is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit educational foundation, IRS # 31-1592564. If you send us an E-MAIL address with your donation we can immediately mail you a RECEIPT!!!! 6. SFTT Website. Please check out our updates, i.e. objectives, mission statement, book reports, etc. If you didn't get the complete newsletter, you can find it archived on the website http://www.sftt.org. Until next week let' s make contact - break through -- and exploit! R.W. Zimmermann President SFTT [EMAIL PROTECTED] =============================================================== ARTICLE 1 - Defending America ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Better Luck next Time ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By David Hackworth The 25th anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam was like a slow-moving, thousand-mile-long funeral procession. The media relentlessly barraged us with worn memories. The tube, magazines and newspapers picked at the scars of the war until they got down to the bloodless bone. Rarely was anything substantial covered. The tempo picked up after the Cuban kid, perhaps the last tragic captive of the Cold War, was returned to his Commie dad and as we drew closer to the anniversary of the day the Soviet tanks manned by North Viets wheezed and rattled their way into Saigon. For the past couple of weeks the war's been dissected, resected and intersected. Once again the guilty were nailed to the cross and the flawed strategies rehashed. The Black Wall was shot from every TV angle, along with the mourners gathered there -- the amateurs with their cameras and the Old Guard professionals dressed in their standard, now-very-tired camouflage gear and beribboned hats. Strangely, in all this dark deliberation, precious little has been said about the grunts who fought in Vietnam. You remember them, the kids who were sent there to be cannon fodder, so badly trained and with hardly a clue about the purpose of the conflict. You know, the 18- and 19-year-olds who toted the Black Stick, the M-16 rifle, the worst infantry weapon ever placed in an American soldier's hands. A favorite, of course, of the racketeers in Washington who I'm sure bought Colt Industries low and sold high oh-so patriotically. The average Viet vet's age today is 52. Many still carry a hangover from "The Vietnam Experience." When they got home, their dads from the "Greatest Generation"-- who'd won The Big War -- called them slackers who didn't fight hard enough. "Or," the vets of Anzio and Saipan said, "they would have won." Since most other folks gave our boys the same short shrift, they never were really allowed to talk about -- to process -- what happened to them. For the grunts, Vietnam was one of America's toughest infantry fights. In their fathers' war, few groundpounders clocked up the frontline combat days like the Vietnam vets. The U.S. Army's 3d Infantry Division, which fought from Africa to Czechoslovakia, had the record for more combat grunt time than any other U.S. foot-slogging outfit in World War II. Total line days: about 350. The average Viet grunt clocked 365 line days, unless he went out early by litter or body bag. In their dads' war, there were tidy fronts, reserve time, breathing space between invasions and the old "Two up and one back" tactic. In Vietnam, there was no reserve time, no fronts, no rest time, just the endless pounding over some of the worst terrain our infantry has ever slogged through. And every unit was fully committed -- there was no "Two up and one back." The generals had to have their high body counts and their follow-on promotions. True, the Germans and Japanese were worthy foes. But the Viet infantry was as hard core as the Japanese and as professional at war as the Germans. And the Viets knew how to strike from the shadows. They were everywhere and nowhere, not easy to ID. The old man who cut the troops' hair was really a Viet Cong colonel. The pretty girl on the side of the road selling Cokes spied for the Viet Cong and also set out mines at night. The mines and booby traps were ever-present. They were wall-to-wall, ranging from a Coke can wrapped with barbwire and filled with C-4, to a dud 500-pound U.S. bomb rigged with a tripwire. Thirty percent of U.S. casualties came from these evil devices. Every time a grunt put down a foot, he didn't know if he'd have a leg or a life when his boot hit the dirt. Try doing that for 365 days and see what it does to your head. For sure, there will be another of these funeral dirges in another five years to mark the 30th anniversary of a war we had no business fighting. Maybe then the press will honor the unsung heroes of Vietnam and finally welcome them home. An act that might allow these brave vets to heal at last. *** Http://www.hackworth.com is the address of David Hackworth's home page. Sign in for the free weekly Defending America column at his Web site. Send mail to P.O. Box 5210, Greenwich, CT 06831. © 2000 David H. Hackworth Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc. ================================================== ARTICLE 2 - "From my Position" -- On the way!" ~~~~~~~~~ Slides R US ~~~~~~~~~ By R.W. Zimmermann President SFTT 05/03/00 Slides R US is what the Wall Street Journal describes in its 26 April article as the disease that is paralyzing the US military. Again, senior commanders and think tanks are pointing at the similarities to the political micromanagement during Vietnam and that of the current White House. Our man in the big house hasn't done much good for national defense but making him responsible for the military's PowerPoint briefing paralysis is nonsense. US News and World Report and the Wall Street Journal missed a historical fact - although Bill Gates conceived Power Point, it really started with Harvard Graphics. A letter from one of my old Captain pals from the "Europe days" in the mid 80's reminded me that the problem is much older than reported. My buddy wrote; "remember the long nights during "hell week," when we produced over 150 briefing slides for the dreaded quarterly training brief, the "QTB?" Man, do I ever remember! "Winning with Harvard Graphics" started with the same guys who claim responsibility for the "brilliant" Gulf War victory. In the early eighties, the "Vuono" QTB became the standard monster brief by which all other briefing marathons were measured. The QTB made every commander, from company to division, brief his industrial training contract to the next higher commander. In overseas units, even the cleaning lady from the Post Exchange briefed. To impress the brass, units fudged readiness data in a week-long preparation, strongly "guided" by senior commanders armed with trendy business degrees. The end results were glitzy plans with little chance for actual execution -- plain wishful thinking! With new slide technology, tactical skills had become less important for career success. Believing I was a pretty good war-fighter after several platoon commands, early company command and attending the first rate Canadian Land Forces Staff College, I reported to the US Army's Combined Services Staff School (CAS3). Shock! The highlight of my training there was not tactics or organizational skills but how to make "Army of Excellence" slides. I still recall my staff leader counseling me after I briefed a fine armored counterattack plan. The good Colonel just stared at me and said, " Zimmermann, your plan is irrelevant and your slides suck! How in the hell do you think you get a top-block rating from your Senior Rater with such a mediocre first impression?" The more slides we produced, the bigger our operational paralysis became. During the REFORGER 88 exercise in Europe I was part of a Brigade tactical staff briefing that lasted over 4 hours. Our mission: effect link-up with a German Panzer Brigade and a follow-on combined attack. While we were still briefing options to the commander, who couldn't decide on how to do the link up, the Germans occupied their position in our sector almost flawlessly and at night. They had received their orders WWII style over the radio and with motorcycle messengers -- no slides! How about the brilliant victory over Iraq's elite forces in Desert Storm as US News recently described it? Guess what? Slides R US made it to the desert and actually could have endangered tactical victory. Our staffs were beaten into the ground with endless slide productions and most of the key staff guys were "babbling idiots" when critical decisions came due after enemy contact. Had we faced the I SS Panzer Corps at only 50% strength, we wouldn't have looked as brilliant. Thank God for an incompetent enemy and air supremacy is all I can say. But the propaganda victory made the brass and the media blind and arrogant and PowerPoint emerged triumphantly over Harvard Graphics and in color. Driven by technologically primed princes, the briefing culture had completely taken charge. I still shake my head when I think about the many war plans that some of my great superiors produced on slides with only a shallow map study. They accepted the plan because it looked good! Maybe General Shelton's guidance to stop the briefing craze is a right step to prevent a future operational disaster. Our military must refocus on execution and clear vision. I recommend testing some of the reforms at the National Training Center where process and the perfect plan are truly adored. Teach leaders to build and communicate simple, flexible plans and to allow them to exploit success when it appears reasonable to deviate from the plan. Rediscover the art of listening, note taking and interpreting the ground from the map. Everyone in today's military needs slides and XEROX copies because they don't listen during critical briefings. If we don't change, Marine General Sheehan's prediction might come true -- that we will be the world's finest staff driven off a hill by a Third World Nation! Zimm © R.W. Zimmermann, LandserUSA President SFTT [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============================================================== ARTICLE 3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What's Your Point, Lieutenant? Just Cut To the Pie Charts---The Pentagon Declares War On Electronic Slide Shows That Make Briefings a Pain ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ed.: Self-paralysis through high-speed slide making technology. This recent Wall Street Journal highlights how the "blind" application of business techniques and technology can do more damage than good. It will be an uphill battle to get rid of Power Point because the perfumed princes need it as a crutch! Read my article on the history of the slide wars. ************************************************************************ By Greg Jaffe 04/26/2000 The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON -- Earlier this year, Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, issued an unusual order to U.S. military bases around the globe. His message: enough with the bells and whistles -- just get to the point. It seems that e-mailed military briefings larded with electronic "slides" of booming tanks and spinning pie charts were gobbling up so much of the Defense Department's classified bandwidth that they were slowing more-critical communications between headquarters and units in the field. "The chairman basically told everyone that we don't need Venetian-blind effects or fancy backdrops. All we need is the information," says one senior Defense Department official. Gen. Shelton's order is only the Pentagon's most recent assault on a growing electronic menace: the PowerPoint briefing. Sure, business executives complain about the seemingly endless PowerPoint presentations put on by overeager middle managers in darkened boardrooms across America. But in the military, the Microsoft program, which helps users create computer-based graphics and sound effects, has become one of the most dreaded facts of life. And it's even shouldering the blame for at least some of the armed forces' ills. Congressional support for new weapons programs isn't as strong as expected? Army Secretary Louis Caldera suggests that PowerPoint presentations are alienating lawmakers. "People are not listening to us, because they are spending so much time trying to understand these incredibly complex slides," he says. Too many bright, young junior officers are leaving the military for the private sector? A recent survey of captains at Fort Benning, Ga., cites the "ubiquity of the PowerPoint Army" as a prime reason for their disaffection. "The idea behind most of these briefings is for us to sit through 100 slides with our eyes glazed over, and then to do what all military organizations hope for . . . to surrender to an overwhelming mass," says Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. Old-fashioned slide briefings, designed to update generals on troop movements, have been a staple of the military since World War II. But in only a few short years PowerPoint has altered the landscape. Just as word processing made it easier to produce long, meandering memos, the spread of PowerPoint has unleashed a blizzard of jazzy but often incoherent visuals. Instead of drawing up a dozen slides on a legal pad and running them over to the graphics department, captains and colonels now can create hundreds of slides in a few hours without ever leaving their desks. If the spirit moves them they can build in gunfire sound effects and images that explode like land mines. "There is an arms-race dimension to it," says Peter Feaver, a military expert at Duke University and frequent PowerPoint briefer at various war colleges. "If there are three briefings in a row, and you are the one with the lowest production values, you look really lame." PowerPoint has become such an ingrained part of the defense culture that it has seeped into the military lexicon. "PowerPoint Ranger" is a derogatory term for a desk-bound bureaucrat more adept at making slides than tossing grenades. There is even a "PowerPoint Ranger Creed," a parody of the Marine Corp's famous "Rifleman's Creed": "This is my PowerPoint. There are many like it, but mine is [PowerPoint] 97. I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its fonts, its accessories and its formats . . . My PowerPoint and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our subject. We are the saviors of my career." The parody is zapping around the Defense Department as a PowerPoint slide complete with the sound of explosions and featuring an animated John Wayne in Army Ranger garb wielding a laser pointer. How did a piece of technology that was supposed to improve communication become a barrier to it? Some military sociologists say the endless presentations are a product of the military's zero-defect culture, in which one mediocre review by a superior can torpedo a career. "Young officers are worried that they might leave something out of their briefing, and a supervisor might say something about it. So they pack their presentations with every detail that they can think off," says Charles Moskos, a military-culture expert at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. Others blame the problem on the absence of a formidable enemy. "We crave something that explains who we are," says Ret. Army Col. Henry G. Cole. "The PowerPoint game creates the illusion of control. All those moving arrows and graphics become reality for a military that is trapped in this permanent state of shadow-boxing an enemy that no longer exists." Whatever the cause, a handful of senior Pentagon officials have decided to attack the PowerPoint problem head-on. The Navy's Mr. Danzig announced late last year that he was no longer willing to soldier through the slide shows. He maintains that PowerPoint briefings are only necessary for two reasons: If field conditions are changing rapidly or if the audience is "functionally illiterate." "In the Pentagon the second seems to be the underlying presumption," grouses Mr. Danzig, who now asks to get all his briefings in written form. Mr. Danzig's Army counterpart, Mr. Caldera, says he, too, would ban the presentations if he thought he could get away with it. "For some of these guys, taking away their PowerPoint would be like cutting off their hands," he says. Mr. Caldera's strategy is to interrupt the show with questions when he gets bored. Despite such countermeasures, PowerPoint is showing no signs of retreat. Indeed, it seems to be spreading. James A. Calpin, an officer in the Naval Reserves, just returned home from duty in Operation Northern Watch in Turkey, where PowerPoint has just begun to surface in officer presentations. "I was able to come in and spruce up their briefings, and they were just wowed. People over there just loved it," he says. Foreign armed services also are beginning to get in on the act. "You can't speak with the U.S. military without knowing PowerPoint," says Margaret Hayes, an instructor at National Defense University in Washington, who teaches Latin American military officers how to use the software. Unfortunately, Ms. Hayes admits many foreign officers, including those fluent in PowerPoint visuals, still struggle to understand their U.S. counterparts' complicated slide presentations. "We've gotten away from inviting our colleagues from the Department of Defense to brief our visiting officers. Some of their presentations are a little bit too complex and too inhibiting," she says. All of which makes Duke University's Mr. Feaver wonder if the U.S. military is misusing the technology. "If we really wanted to accomplish something we shouldn't be teaching our allies how to use PowerPoint," he says. "We should give it to the Iraqis. We'd never have to worry about them again." ============================================================== ARTICLE 4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Female General's Board Ties Questioned ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ed.: To no surprise, it looks like Princess Claudia prepared her transition to leave the Army by dabbling in three profit businesses and establishing connections to the Democratic fundraising machine. It is sad to hear that our so-called legal experts and many retired senior officers don't see anything wrong with this scheming while in uniform. It seems profit and greed wins over service and honor. Help us that we don't see the lady in a future political position. Article appeared in the Washington Post on 26 April. ************************************************************************ By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer Lt. Gen. Claudia J. Kennedy, the highest-ranking woman in the Army, served on the boards of three Florida companies started by Democratic fundraiser Terence McAuliffe, a close friend of President Clinton, a Washington-based watchdog group said yesterday. The Center for Public Integrity said Kennedy sat on the boards of two holding companies and one insurance company that were started in 1997 and dissolved last year without making any profits. The center said Kennedy's service on the boards might violate Defense Department ethics rules. But the Army emphatically rejected that view, saying she had obeyed all regulations both in seeking prior approval from Army lawyers and then in properly disclosing her role. She never received any compensation and, in fact, never attended a board meeting, the Army's statement noted. Kennedy through a spokesman declined to comment. McAuliffe confirmed the Army's account. Until about six months ago, he said, Kennedy was dating his father-in-law, Richard Swann, who recommended her to him. "She'd be an outstanding asset to any board," McAuliffe added. In any event, the disclosure that Kennedy had business dealings with McAuliffe is likely to further inflame opinion about her within the military. Kennedy has been prominent since 1997, when she was named the Army's chief of intelligence, making her one of just three women ever to achieve three-star rank in the U.S. armed forces. She has been in the headlines lately because of the disclosure that last fall she charged another Army general with sexually harassing her in 1996. The Army inspector general is investigating that charge, and Pentagon officials say they expect the matter to be resolved within two or three weeks. The Center for Public Integrity said in its report that it began examining McAuliffe's business dealings and Kennedy's board positions before the sexual harassment charges were disclosed last month by the Washington Times. Experts on military ethics gave mixed opinions yesterday on whether a senior officer should be involved in private businesses operated by the president's chief fundraiser. Most said they had no problem with it, but some said it gave them pause. "I think it's fine," said Sheila Cheston, a former general counsel of the Air Force, when asked about Kennedy being a director of a for-profit corporation. As for being involved in the business ventures of a presidential fundraiser, Cheston said, "That doesn't make it wrong." Similarly, retired Rear Adm. John Jenkins, a former judge advocate general of the Navy, said he saw no legal or ethical problem with Kennedy's unpaid service on a corporate board. But Jenkins, who teaches legal ethics at George Washington University law school, was more cautious on the question of whether an active-duty member of the military, which generally shuns political activity, should have business ties to someone deeply involved in partisan politics. "I don't think it's a violation of any kind of regulation. Would I do it? Probably not," he said. McAuliffe, who has aggressively raised campaign funds for Clinton and other Democrats, last fall helped the Clintons buy a house in suburban New York by guaranteeing a loan they received through Bankers Trust. When that arrangement proved controversial, the Clintons obtained another loan that didn't require a guarantee. Military historian Carlo D'Este, the author of several books about the Army, said he found Kennedy's actions "a bit odd." He added: "I'm surprised someone didn't whisper to her, 'You don't want to do this.' " Retired Lt. Gen. Richard Trefry, a former Army inspector general, said that in his experience, "active-duty officers have shied away from business connections." =============================================================== **COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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