"Some have asked", said Donald Rumsfeld this week, "why we are proposing any base closures during a time of war. The answer is because these changes are essential to helping us win this war." And, of course, it makes financial sense. Closing 33 big bases and cutting back another 150 facilities should save the Pentagon close to $50 billion over the next two decades. Correct or not, the defence secretary's reasoning is about to be attacked by state and local governments across the country. They have until early September to convince the independent Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) that their particular bits of America's vast military empire must be preserved from Rummy's axe. In the four previous BRAC rounds, the commission has approved 85% of the Defence Department's recommendations. In all likelihood, therefore, that means tough luck for politicians such as Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, who describes the proposed closure of the Portsmouth naval shipyard, at a cost to the state of 4,510 jobs, as "nothing short of stunning, devastating and, above all, outrageous" (she has a point, since the navy secretary had just praised the shipyard for "a phenomenal record of cost, schedule, quality and safety performance").
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