Gates affirmed before Congress that the base budget request reflects the Pentagon's major institutional priorities which are "reaffirming and strengthening the nation's commitment to care for the all-volunteer force, rebalancing America's defense posture by emphasizing capabilities needed to prevail in current conflicts while enhancing capabilities that may be needed in the future and continuing the department's commitment to reform how it does business."
His remarks came in a testimony before the Senate armed services committee along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen and Under Secretary of Defense Robert Hale to discuss defense authorization request for the year 2011, the Quadrennial defense review and the ballistic missile defense review.
The fiscal year 2011 defense budget request, unveiled by the White House yesterday, included USD 549 billion for the base budget and USD 159 billion for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in addition to a 2010 supplemental request of USD 33 billion to fund the additional 30,000 troops to support the White Houses Afghanistan policy announced last December.
Gates noted that measurement of progress in Afghanistan are the recruitment goals and ongoing training for the Afghan national security forces.
Asked about Afghan and Pakistani skepticism over the United States maintaining a long term strategy in the region, Gates affirmed that "there definitely is such a deficit of trust with Pakistan and I think it is historical" and added that the July 2011 of US troops from Afghanistan is "the beginning of a process and that there is no deadline on that process." "But there also is an acknowledgment by some of the Afghans that they needed that kind of wake-up call in order to begin to realize they were going to have to take responsibility themselves for defeating the Taliban, that this was not something that everybody else could do for them," he added.
Meanwhile, top Republican and Democratic Senators held a news conference on Capitol Hill calling to cut off funding to the White House for the trials of the 9-11 conspirators in civilian courts.
The Senators included Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Jim Webb, Blanche Lincoln, Jeff Sessions, Jim Demint, Joseph Liberman and Orin Hatch.
"All of us have something in common on the stage today; we believe we are at war. The law enforcement model being used by the Obama administration should be rejected. We are not fighting a crime; we are fighting a war and to criminalize this war puts our nation at risk," said Graham.
"I believe it is inappropriate to give the mastermind of 9-11 full constitutional rights of an American citizen. We reject the law enforcement model. Civilian trials of non-citizen enemy combatants captured on the battlefield is a stark departure from past precedent has never been used by our nation before," he added.
Mayor Bloomberg reversed last week his initial position and expressed concern over having the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal court in lower Manhattan, blocks from the World Trade Center, saying "it would be great if the federal government could find a site that did not cost a billion dollars, which using downtown bill." Media reports hinted that the US administration backed off from taking this step but there is no official confirmation by the White House or the Justice Department yet.
Graham further noted that civilian trials "are necessarily dangerous, messy, confusing and expensive" and added that military commissions "can be held at Guantanamo Bay quickly, securely and will add very little additional cost."
In the meantime Reuters carried a story under the headline ‘Backdoor taxes to hit middle class. Within hours of it being posted, the story that criticizes Obama administration for its budget bungling was withdrawn and a small note was put on the place of the story instead.
Source : http://www.khabrein.info/news/Gates_budget_to_rebalance_US_defense_posture___backdoor_taxes_to_hit_middle_class_story_taken_down_1265138805/
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