I found Mr. Korb's article "10 Myths About the Defense Budget" an interesting introduction to _In These Times_. You see, I fully agree with Mr. Korb that the Pentagon's budget has vast room for revision. I further agree that leaders have "accepted a series of misleading assumptions, or half truths, about the current state of America's military."

I just happen to wonder how countering those myths with misrepresentations and illogic benefits the idea of reforming that budget.

Whenever one discusses the military prior to either World War in comparison to the military of today, as Mr. Korb does, it would be good to remember that we spent the first year of both World Wars _losing_, sending thousands of inexperienced civilians into combat, allowing attrition and the terrors of the battlefield to train the soldiers that eventually drove back the enemy. The point of today's standing army and massive realism-based training programs is to avoid those massive initial casualties. But this does not compare to what follows.

I wonder how Mr. Korb, prior assistant secretary of defense for manpower, reserve affairs and logistics, could attest that the two-war strategy "defies both logic and history". Apparently the recent 50th anniversary of World War Two was not enough to remind him of the two-front war that spawned that policy.

I'm also puzzled at his use of a logical fallacy with "Myth #8". It does not matter what percentage of "high quality accessions" the military has recruited - the "myth" speaks of total recruitment. The truth and validity of his statement has nothing to do with the truth and validity of the myth he's seeking to disprove.

When he addresses deployment (and how that affects retention), Mr. Korb does address relevant numbers, and shows an overall decrease in overseas deployment. What he does not show (or address at all) is the frequency, length, and hardship of those deployments. By not addressing these factors, Mr. Korb leaves potential loopholes in his argument.

Insofar as post housing goes... I'd just have to ask Mr. Korb if he's ever actually lived in base housing recently. Or for that matter, if he'd be comfortable having his family living in a house where the lead paint had not been removed, but just painted over.

The closest that Mr. Korb gets to addressing real iniquities in the Defense budget - the caption to the photograph, addressing the replacement of aircraft - still begs the question if a much-repaired aircraft expected to perform high-g maneuvers is the same as a brand new aircraft of the same type. These aircraft are expected to perform to levels and under strain rarely experienced by commercial aircraft; you can only patch for so long without compromising quality. That is, unless Mr. Korb meant the research and development of new multi-billion aircraft.

If that was his intent, then he may have actually stumbled onto the greatest myth of the Pentagon - that high-tech equipment can actually replace human soldiers on the ground. This myth is an especially powerful one, since it simultaneously reduces the risk of American casualties – and is a massive pork barrel for military manufacturers.

This myth, in turn, leads to the second-greatest myth - that soldiers don't require support for their families. Or that some of the fringe benefits (especially health care) have been slowly drawn down over the last decade. For example, many military hospitals have become little more than "superclinics" with limited services and chronic understaffing.

Make no mistake, I fully agree with Mr. Korb that the defense budget needs serious overhaul. However, I find no use in trying to provoke that with arguments full of half-truths and logical inconsistencies. That sort of behavior simply sets our arguments up to be shot down.

There are plenty of real problems with the military and its budget. I don't understand why Mr. Korb had to create imaginary ones to prove his point.

-- Steven Saus

[Note to Editors - I'm sorry about the length; I just got carried away. I look forward to reading the rest of my first issue. Have a great day!]

(Actually, the rest of the issue IS pretty good, but that one article just got on my nerves….)