Word: mcnamara
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...proposed expenditures by Government agencies, it has accorded the Defense Department, the biggest spender of them all, special treatment that results in considerable freedom from stringent review. Congress, with its key military and appropriations committees headed by promilitary Southerners, has occasionally voted more money than the Pentagon requested. When McNamara announced the closing of 80 installations in 1964, he received 169 protests from Congressmen that same...
...nonsense approach to military affairs. He developed a considerable expertise on the subject as a member for 14 years of the House Appropriations subcommittee, which oversees all defense expenditures. Twice, in fact, he taxed Robert Mc-Namara with underestimating costs in Viet Nam and produced his own calculations, which McNamara rejected. On both occasions, Laird turned out to be right...
...years. When Laird wanted to provide a questioning Senator with technical data during last week's hearings, he turned either to Packard or Foster. Laird is hardly unsympathetic to the uniformed military Establishment, but he has laid down one ground rule for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Under McNamara, top generals and admirals often aired their policy differences with the civilian Secretary by taking their case before congressional committees hostile to McNamara. Laird has ordered that all such disputes will be resolved inside the Pentagon, not in public...
...fact is that Lyndon Johnson's decision, dutifully but reluctantly implemented by McNamara, was based at least as much on domestic political considerations as on international factors. Sentinel, wags said at the time, was really a defense against American Republicans, not Chinese Communists. Johnson might well have halted the Sentinel project last summer if he could have arranged, as the Soviets wished, to begin arms-control talks. He had on his desk an unsigned message confirming his willingness to negotiate on the night that Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin brought him word of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. That...
Miscalculations of the rival's intentions are common. In 1960, there was fear of a "missile gap." In 1965, the U.S. concluded that the Russians had given up quantitative arms competition, only to see them spurt forward later. And before leaving office, McNamara acknowledged that, overall, the U.S. had spent too much on weaponry during his tenure because of mistaken estimates of Russian intentions. However, the Russians have accelerated their buildup, tripling their supply of land-based missiles in little more than two years. The U.S. remains ahead in overall nuclear-delivery capability, but Russia continues to close...