Word: leathernecks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There's a whole lot of shakin' going on inside Pentagon combat boots as President Clinton prepares to pick a new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The reason is that one of two top candidates is a tough-talking Leatherneck who thinks today's military are deployed too often for too long and are buying too many weapons at too high a price. The appointment of Marine General John Sheehan, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command (his main rival is the current Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman, Air Force General Joseph Ralston), would make him the first Marine...
...Army. Although many experts agree with Halloran, any move in that direction would encounter huge political land mines. Harry Truman once tried to slash the Marines on the grounds that the Navy did not need its own army, but he was beaten by what he described as a Leatherneck "propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin's." Aside from the clout of ten Senators and 21 Representatives in the current Congress who served in the Marines, the corps exudes such a mystical aura that it is unassailable...