AUSA President Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA, Ret., met with Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., last week to discuss a wide range of topics related to national security.

Sen. Reed, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and recent recipient of AUSA’s Outstanding Legislator Award, is a longtime advocate of expanding the Army, a position Gen. Sullivan and the Association strongly shares. Sen. Reed is also concerned about the current state of Army readiness and its impact across the spectrum of defense issues.

The meeting gave both Gen. Sullivan and Sen. Reed the opportunity to share insight to these and other critical issues facing the Army.


Army Secretary Nominee Testifies at Confirmation Hearing

At his confirmation hearing last week to be Army secretary, Pete Geren talked directly about the stresses on soldiers and their families and pledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he would “make sure their voices are heard.”

He told the committee that he was restating his commitment to soldiers and families made when he appeared before the committee in February 2006 for confirmation as under secretary. Geren said that commitment also means that soldiers receive the training, equipment and leadership they need. “They count on their secretary and their chief to stand up for them, get them what they need when they need it.”

Geren acknowledged that “the Army is moving up-armored High Mobility Multipurpose Vehicles between units to ensure pre-deployment training requirements are met at home station.” He added that the Army is using reset to repair, replace and recapitalize equipment beyond Humvees to meet training requirements from new production and is asking for more funds to buy needed equipment.

He said the decision to extend deployments from 12 to 15 months was the better of “two bad choices.” The other choice would have been to extend units on an ad-hoc basis. He added that the move would allow soldiers to spend a year at home before possibly deploying again and provide predictability for their families.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who served in Vietnam as a Marine and whose son recently returned from a tour in Iraq, said he was “deeply troubled” by the Defense Department’s decision to extend overseas deployments. In Sen. Webb’s view, the longer deployments “are going to wreck the Army.” “I would submit that somebody needs to go in to the big boss and close the door and talk about what this is doing to the United States military,” he said.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said soldiers and families “can only take so much.”

The day before the hearing, Geren went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to see and hear firsthand what progress has been made in treating soldiers in the newly-created Warrior Transition Brigade. Soldiers assigned to the brigade are awaiting their status -- continue to serve on active duty or have their disability status determined.

In answer to written questions from the committee he said, “We must not shrink from our responsibility as a nation to care for those who have become ill, injured or wounded in the service of our nation – and we must do better for those suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury.”

The Army plans to hire an additional 200 mental health professionals to serve in the United States and Afghanistan and Iraq. In July, the Army expects to begin training sessions with Army leaders and soldiers to better understand Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury, he said in a written answer to questions from the committee.

The committee’s questions expressed concern over “significant shortages in critically needed medical personnel in both active and reserve components” and military positions being eliminated while the demand for care is increasing.

He told the committee that the Installation Management Command has identified requirements for buildings other than those at Walter Reed to better care for soldiers recovering from wounds, injuries or illness. Geren added these were some of the steps included in the Army Medical Action Plan developed this spring in the wake of stories in the Washington Post and Army Times on the living conditions for soldiers being treated as outpatients at Walter Reed for wounds, injuries and illnesses that they incurred while serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Geren told the committee he was encouraged by the steps taken by MG Gale Pollock, acting surgeon general and MG Eric Schoomaker, commander of Walter Reed, to better care for soldiers and their families that would “allow them to focus on healing” at that medical center and other Army hospitals and clinics.

In his opening statement, he told the committee that “a complex disability system that can frustrate and fail to meet the needs of soldiers” still remains. He called it “a system that fails to acknowledge, understand and treat some of the debilitating yet invisible wounds of war – leaving soldiers to return from war and battle bureaucracy at home. And leaving families at a loss on how to cope.”

Geren added, “The Department of Defense, working with the Congress and the VA have an opportunity that does not come along often, to move our nation a quantum leap forward in fulfillment of that commitment” made by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War to “care for those who have borne the battle, his widow and orphan.”

AUSA Examines Army’s Medical Action Plan

The latest Defense Report issued by AUSA’s Institute of Land Warfare offers a timely, comprehensive review of the Army’s Medical Action Plan. The report examines the Army’s initiative to develop a sustainable system wherein wounded, injured and ill soldiers are medically treated and vocationally rehabilitated and ensure the needs of operational units and soldiers and their families are jointly met.

To view this report and other educational materials, visit the Institute of Land Warfare.


Defense Authorization Likely Delayed Until After Recess

It is doubtful the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill will go to the Senate floor before the July Fourth recess which is scheduled to begin on Monday.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said it would likely take a full two weeks to debate the bill making it unlikely that it could pass before the recess.

Once the bill does reach the floor, Democrats have announced plans to resume the Iraqi War debate by offering amendments related to Iraq including:

--an amendment that calls for President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by March 2008. (If this sounds familiar, it is! It mirrors a failed amendment included in the fiscal 2007 emergency supplemental spending bill);

--an amendment that will outline a timetable for an Iraq drawdown;

--a provision which would require the Administration to seek Congress’ approval to again authorize the Iraq war; and,

--legislation requiring the Pentagon to certify that military personnel are ready to go back to war before they deploy.

The House passed its version in May. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., took a different approach. Chairman Skelton fought successfully to keep withdrawal language on Iraq out of his version of the bill in order to prevent a presidential veto threat.


Question of the Week
Two events related to the military happened on this date, June 25 – the first in 1876 and the other in 1950. What were they?
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Answer: June 25, 1876 - The Battle of Little Bighorn--also called Custer's Last Stand--marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst U.S. Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War when Native American forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated the troops of LTC George Armstrong Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana's Little Bighorn River.

Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans. Within an hour, Custer and every last one of his soldiers were dead.

June 25, 1950 - The Korean War began when armed forces from communist North Korea smashed into South Korea. The United States, acting under the auspices of the United Nations, quickly sprang to the defense of South Korea. After the United States pushed a resolution through the U.N.'s Security Council calling for military assistance, President Truman dispatched U.S. land, air, and sea forces to Korea to engage in what he termed a "police action." The American intervention turned the tide, and U.S. and South Korean forces marched into North Korea. This action, however, prompted the massive intervention of communist Chinese forces in late 1950. The war in Korea subsequently bogged down into a bloody stalemate. In 1953, the United States and North Korea signed a cease-fire that ended the conflict. Over 55,000 American troops were killed in the conflict.