Recommended: The Right Defense Cuts

Ralph Peters is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel and author both of fiction and of serious military non-fiction, including Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? (1999)and Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World (2000), both excellent books. His recent New York Post article The right defense cuts is right to the point.

C. Northcote Parkinson, author of the famous "Parkinson Laws", noted in one of his books that at one point the British Navy had more Admirals than ships, the result of bureaucratic creep. Gates, one of the few level-headed people in Washington in either party, has observed much the same about today's military, and intends to try to do something about it.

The question is, will Congressional delegations and influential defense contractors manage to defeat his attempt to bring sanity to the militarily budget.