Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 11, 2007
Pg. 16
By Michael Luo
WASHINGTON, April 10 — Mitt Romney made his most extensive remarks on military and foreign policy on Tuesday, saying that if elected president he would push to add at least 100,000 troops to the armed forces and significantly increase military spending.
Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who is vying for the Republican nomination for president next year, outlined his proposals in a speech at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University in College Station. Warning of the threat posed by radical Islam, he said the military needed to change to respond to it.
“Our objective is a strong America and a safe world,” he said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
Mr. Romney restated his support for President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, saying the alternative would bring chaos to the region and “present grave risks to America.” He made his remarks, in which he also criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her visit to Syria, a day before a Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, was to give a major address on Iraq.
Mr. Romney devoted the bulk of his proposals to beyond the Iraq war. This year, Mr. Bush requested a military budget for 2008 of $481.4 billion, excluding money for military operations, an 11 percent increase over last year. If approved, it would elevate military spending to levels unseen since at least the 1980s, when adjusted for inflation.
Mr. Romney said an additional $30 billion to $40 billion a year over the next few years was needed to “modernize our military, address gaps in our troop levels, ease the strain on our National Guard and Reserves and support our wounded soldiers.”
Under his calculations, he said, the United States should commit to spend at least 4 percent of its gross domestic product on the military, up from 3.9 percent. “But increased spending must not mean increased waste,” he said.
Mr. Romney has sought to portray himself as a Washington outsider who would use his business experience, which has made him by far the wealthiest of the hopefuls, to transform government. He said he would organize business leaders and military experts to “carry out a stem-to-stern analysis of military purchasing.”
Mr. Romney also said he would overhaul the civilian bureaucracies that deal with foreign policies like banking, energy and commerce, to improve coordination in confronting needs overseas.
“Just as the military has divided the world into common regions for all of its branches,” he said, “so too the civilian agencies should align along consistent boundaries.”
The goal, he added, is to avoid what occurred in Iraq, when “many of our nonmilitary resources moved like they were stuck in tar.”
“They fight over which agency will pay the $11 per diem cost of food at the same time that we are spending over $7 billion a month and taking human casualties,” he said.
He proposed appointing one official with authority over all those civilian agencies and departments, not unlike the military commander of the Central Command. He also called for multilateralism, saying one of his first acts as president would be a “summit of nations” that would include moderate Islamic states, as well as other leading developed countries. Such a meeting, Mr. Romney said, could result in a commitment to invest in countries confronting Islamic extremists.
“American military action cannot change the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims,” he said. “Only Muslims will be able to defeat the violent radicals. But we can help them.”
April 11, 2007
Pg. 16
By Michael Luo
WASHINGTON, April 10 — Mitt Romney made his most extensive remarks on military and foreign policy on Tuesday, saying that if elected president he would push to add at least 100,000 troops to the armed forces and significantly increase military spending.
Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who is vying for the Republican nomination for president next year, outlined his proposals in a speech at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at Texas A&M University in College Station. Warning of the threat posed by radical Islam, he said the military needed to change to respond to it.
“Our objective is a strong America and a safe world,” he said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks.
Mr. Romney restated his support for President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, saying the alternative would bring chaos to the region and “present grave risks to America.” He made his remarks, in which he also criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her visit to Syria, a day before a Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, was to give a major address on Iraq.
Mr. Romney devoted the bulk of his proposals to beyond the Iraq war. This year, Mr. Bush requested a military budget for 2008 of $481.4 billion, excluding money for military operations, an 11 percent increase over last year. If approved, it would elevate military spending to levels unseen since at least the 1980s, when adjusted for inflation.
Mr. Romney said an additional $30 billion to $40 billion a year over the next few years was needed to “modernize our military, address gaps in our troop levels, ease the strain on our National Guard and Reserves and support our wounded soldiers.”
Under his calculations, he said, the United States should commit to spend at least 4 percent of its gross domestic product on the military, up from 3.9 percent. “But increased spending must not mean increased waste,” he said.
Mr. Romney has sought to portray himself as a Washington outsider who would use his business experience, which has made him by far the wealthiest of the hopefuls, to transform government. He said he would organize business leaders and military experts to “carry out a stem-to-stern analysis of military purchasing.”
Mr. Romney also said he would overhaul the civilian bureaucracies that deal with foreign policies like banking, energy and commerce, to improve coordination in confronting needs overseas.
“Just as the military has divided the world into common regions for all of its branches,” he said, “so too the civilian agencies should align along consistent boundaries.”
The goal, he added, is to avoid what occurred in Iraq, when “many of our nonmilitary resources moved like they were stuck in tar.”
“They fight over which agency will pay the $11 per diem cost of food at the same time that we are spending over $7 billion a month and taking human casualties,” he said.
He proposed appointing one official with authority over all those civilian agencies and departments, not unlike the military commander of the Central Command. He also called for multilateralism, saying one of his first acts as president would be a “summit of nations” that would include moderate Islamic states, as well as other leading developed countries. Such a meeting, Mr. Romney said, could result in a commitment to invest in countries confronting Islamic extremists.
“American military action cannot change the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims,” he said. “Only Muslims will be able to defeat the violent radicals. But we can help them.”