Word: wilson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...insistence of Harry Truman, left the U.S. almost totally unprepared for Korea; austere George Marshall, who had to work mightily to pick up Johnson's pieces; able Robert Abercrombie Lovett, who found that even-handed patience was not nearly enough for the Pentagon; and blunt Charles Erwin Wilson, whose experience remains most meaningful of all to Neil McElroy...
...right or wrong, better or worse, Charlie Wilson was the man most responsible for the situation McElroy found in the U.S. military establishment. Wilson's five-year tenure covered half the life span of the Defense Department, and his heavy thumb left the biggest print. When Wilson came to Washington the Korean war was about over, and his first big job was to convert to the long-haul New Look. He cut manpower, substituted the firepower of increasingly plentiful nuclear weapons, and it is Charlie Wilson's monument that he maintained an effective force-in-being that kept...
...Charlie Wilson's New Look lacked forward vision. He had little if any use for the basic research that makes possible the weapons of the future. Why is the grass green and the sky blue? Why do fried potatoes turn brown? What is the molecular secret of life itself? The answers could not shoot and therefore should not be bought with defense dollars. Why would anyone want to go to the moon? An outer-space satellite could not destroy a target and should therefore have a relatively low priority. In 1957, for example, Wilson's research and development...
Moreover, Charlie Wilson's idea of improving Pentagon organization was to bring in more civilian officials, some plain incompetent, few with much real military knowledge. While the professional military men, with all their parochial bickering, are far from blameless, it is nonetheless true that the major mistakes of Wilson's day were made by civilians. It was civilian mismanagement of funds last year that forced procurement cutbacks and threatened to wreck the nation's airframe industry. It was a civilian decision that left the Strategic Air Command with a majority of its force grounded for lack...
...biggest show-business weddings of this era will take place when Shirl Conway, the musical comedy and TV star, and Composer Bernie [Vanessa] Wayne, will be married over the NBC network from 2:30 to 3 p.m., in the Studio Chapel. Guest list: Lena Home, Faye Emerson, Julie Wilson...many other celebrities." On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, as announced. Shirl and Bernie were married-under a sky of klieg lights in Manhattan's RCA building, before a TV audience of about 3,000,000. "We have so many friends through the country," Shirl explained, "this...