Word: pentagons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Plenty of gloom is evident in the Pentagon these days. Air Force officers grumble bitterly about Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's decision to cancel the Skybolt missile and his refusal to request more than minimal funds for development of the RS-70 bomber. Navymen are aghast at McNamara's doubts about the utility of aircraft carriers. But the unhappiness of the Air Force and Navy contrasts strikingly with the contented smiles of the Pentagon's Armymen. The U.S. Army is exceedingly pleased with Secretary McNamara. Bubbled an Army general last week: "It is wonderful to have this...
Since that troubled spring of 1961, a shift in official defense doctrine has taken place in Washington. Pentagon planning now puts relatively more emphasis than it did a few years ago on "graduated" or "flexible" responses. The nuclear striking power of strategic bomber and missile forces remains the nation's ultimate defense, but defense policy no longer envisions that those forces would be used to counter limited aggression. This flexible-response doctrine, as General Taylor labeled it, stirred misgivings among some Air Force and civilian strategists. They argued that it might encourage Communists to risk limited aggression, might even...
...Once when a witness started off by saying he had nothing to add to previous testimony, Vinson cut him off with a curt "Thank you. Next witness!" To friends who ask him why he is not Secretary of Defense, his stock reply is: "I'd rather run the Pentagon from up here...
...Washington, the Pentagon announced that after 15 years of efforts, discrimination finally has been eliminated from the Armed Forces reserves. A drive to eliminate discrimination from National Guard outfits by "persuasion" has led to integration of nearly all such state units as well-except in ten Southern states where Guard units are still exclusively white. And in New York, Governor Nelson Rockefeller said he would speed up work on $4 billion worth of state construction projects to create more jobs, especially for Negroes. The state Building and Construction Trades Council promised it would eliminate "any existing discrimination" in New York...
...always, Peking stuck to the dogma that the road to violent revolution in Africa, Asia and Latin America was the only path a true Marxist could follow. As for Soviet charges of warmongering, the Red Chinese replied with an argument that, ironically, echoed some Pentagon strategists. Brush-fire wars, declared Peking, need not necessarily escalate into an all-out nuclear struggle. Truth was, declared the manifesto, the Russians were too selfish and scared to risk their bourgeois gains in far-off battles. "To put it bluntly," said Red China, "whoever considers that a revolution can be made only if everything...