Forbes questions Pentagon transparency regarding JFCOM closure
By JR Hoeft | Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 | PolicyU.S. Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA04) speaks at a House Armed Service Committee hearing today asking many questions regarding the analysis and process surrounding the announced closure of Joint Forces Command (a command which employs thousands primarily in Norfolk and Suffolk, Va.).
Update – Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA01) also clearly shows how the Pentagon has changed its tune several times; not the least he challenges them on their lack of information regarding meetings held at the Pentagon on the subject:
Just curious – for those of you who have worked in government – have you ever been in a meeting without a PowerPoint presentation? Isn’t it a little odd that there is no information from 30 plus meetings from inside the 5-sided puzzle palace?
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Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
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8 Responses to "Forbes questions Pentagon transparency regarding JFCOM closure"
Boom!
repeat after me: this would never happen on Republican John Warner’s watch. repeat after me: this would never happen on Republican George Allen’s watch.
Randy Forbes is working as hard as he can on this issue, but Mark Warner hugs Schumer & what the hell does Webb do? don’t know.
Ready, Fire, Aim!
I am sure that republicans would rather this issue had not come up. Forbes’ attention has always been focused on international and cultural issues, not on the matters here in Hampton Roads. His interest is in the Far East, not Suffolk. But this issue and the hypocrisy of the republican party on their so called pledge to root out unnecessary spending shows once again that promises and pledges are for elections, not governance. Deficit spending returned when Bush took office, and their obstructism to ensure that billionaires get tax cuts shows their real objective; power to protect the priviledged.
Kudos to Randy Forbes, Glenn Nye, Rob Wittman, Ike Skelton and Jim Webb for peeling back this rotten onion. After reviewing the video testimony for both session in their entirety, it’s obvious that this was a decision made based solely on the Business Board recommendations, even though Dep. Sec. was trying to spout platitudes and poppycock about “30 meetings” and “military consultations” to backfill their position, none of which were documented or witnessed. Gag orders were issued to all at JFCOM and DoD to keep the truth from the public and Congress. Congressman Nye put it in perspective when he mentioned that JFCOM represented 1/4 of 1 percent of the “100 Billion” in savings that would be realized. And then the admission by Dep. Sec. that “a good part of a billion may be saved” by the JFCOM closing, but they wouldn’t be sure until they did the analysis.
As Ike Skelton said, it is in the nature of the Services to revert back to their “stove pipe” ways and to reject “jointness” for systems and operating doctrine that “wasn’t invented here” or isn’t owned or controlled by that service i.e. massive duplication of systems, missions, doctrine and explosion of redundant costs between services. When Skelton asked Dep. Sec. who or what organization was going to make sure that “jointness” would be preserved, he was answered some non descript babble about that would be forthcoming after their “analysis”. Ready, Fire, Aim!
Did anyone notice that the Virginia delegation seems to be about the only one opposed to the closing of JFCOM?
I wish to disclose that my daughter has a civilian engineering position at the command so I am not motivated to see it go.
But is Virginia’s opposition to closing the command based only on self interest? If the DOD budget, too, needs to be pared to balance the budget, is JFCOM one area that we need to take the scalpel to? I don’t know myself, but Gates says it is. In my opinion the scalpel needs to bite deeper.
LD, if you watched the Senate and House hearings, both Democratic and Republican members voiced their opinions about the consequences of disestablishing JFCOM. After repeated requests by both the Senate and the House committees for supporting data for the decision, the Pentagon has “stiff-armed”, “stone walled” and otherwise blown off all requests by individual congress members and their respective committees.
Ike Skelton (D-MO) is especially skittish about this decision since he was on the ground floor to develop the joint concept after the disastrous interoperability, doctrine and system problems that resulted in multiple cases of intra and inter unit fratricide during the first Gulf War. Larry Doton and others summarized these and other problems in many papers they published in the early and mid 90’s which became components of the philosophical and operational basis for the establishment of JFCOM. A quote referenced in from one of Doton’s papers by Vito DeMonte: “Never before have we fought such a short war, in such a confusing environment, with such a great percentage of deaths due to friendly fire (Demonte, 1992).” (http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA487939 )
As Mr. Skelton and Randy Forbes indicated during their hearing that there will be a tendency for the services back-slide to where they were prior to the first Gulf War. Will one of the horrible consequences of losing “jointness” be an increase in coalition and friendly fratricide?
[...] has been critical of the Secretary Robert Gates who is in the process of shutting down Joint Forces Command Norfolk. [...]
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