Word: mcnamara
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Secretary of Defense, Robert Strange McNamara, The New York Times Magazine reports, "relaxes well, is a provocative conversationalist because of his wide interests and has the grace and erudition to enterain the lady next to him at the dinner table with a recitation of Yeats...
...argument for such a pause gained some sustenance from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. When he appeared before the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee last August, he was anxious to cool the urge for escalation that had been stirred by earlier testimony from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The brass had argued that without air strikes against North Viet Nam, the U.S. would have needed 800,000 men and $75 billion more to keep even in the war. McNamara insisted that even though the bombing was exacting a high price, it was not cutting the southward flow of men and supplies from Hanoi...
...kind of combat, riot or otherwise, since two of its brigades were among those Guard units in the lowest category of priorities. Its manpower was at the 50% level, and it had no access to needed federal equipment. It is precisely this kind of unit that Defense Secretary McNamara has been trying for years to get rid of. But getting rid of units means getting rid of juicy officer posts in the state. Local politicians and Congressmen are shocked at the thought...
President Dwight Eisenhower tried time and again to reduce and modernize the National Guard and at the same time slash the size of that other nonactive force, the Organized Reserve, which stands separate from the Guard and currently numbers 260,000. Congress balked each time, and until recently Secretary McNamara has had not much more luck with his own reserve reorganization schemes. At last, however, a program seems to be near acceptance. It would trim the Guard in relatively minor terms: from 418,500 men to 400,000. It would be aimed at using those men in fewer, more efficient...
...McNamara's reorganization would go a long way toward improving the Guard's readiness for foreign emergencies. It would not, of course, cut to the heart of the question: state control. In 1903, after disastrous results with the militia in the Spanish-American War, Secretary of War Elihu Root vainly sought to eliminate the states' role and create a reserve of militiamen controlled entirely by the Federal Government. In 1948, a Defense Department committee under Assistant Secretary (and later Secretary) of the Army Gordon Gray urged much the same. There is much to be said for this...