Actually, I give 50-50 odds that when Congresscritters from affected states appeal to Rumsfeld to remove their bases from the list, the requests from red states will be granted. That’ll make great political fodder for the 2006 campaign commercials (“Senator SoAndSo couldn’t stop the closing of our military bases…”).
And, of course, when President Clinton talked about base closures, he was immediately tarred for “weakening” the military. What are the odds that we’ll hear those complaints this time around?
Chefguy, gaucho, I can actually give you a good reason for that (well, at least Florida.) Again, it’s CENTCOM. Central Command is over all US Forces in the world from Egypt to India, south to Sudan, and north to the Russian border. Seeing as how the vast majority of CENTCOM’s meat is packed into MacDill AFB and Patrick AFB (including Army and Navy assets,) I can understand why those bases picked up a shitload of new jobs. That’s the core of my op. Will it be next year that they decide the meat at Shaw can go down there too? (and they do have the space for 9th AF, 3rd Army, and 20th FW.)
Rummy asked for this round back in '00-'01. It was the final step in finishing the work started in the Goldwater-Nichols act and the first step in turning the DoD into an ‘organic’ force of Brigade Combat Teams.