DoD News Briefing
Monday, December 21, 1998 - 4:15 p.m. (EST)
Presenter: Subject: Military Pay and Retirement
Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen
[Also participating in the briefing was General Henry H. Shelton, U. S. Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]
Secretary Cohen: Good afternoon.
The United States has the best military in the world and our forces demonstrated this during Operation DESERT FOX this past week. Every day U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines along with members of the Coast Guard work together to protect our national interests around the world and our freedom and prosperity here at home.
The key to our strength is the men and women who serve us in uniform. One of my primary responsibilities as Secretary of Defense is to assure that we recruit and train and retain the best people we can possibly find.
Military training is difficult and extensive. It takes five to seven years to train an Air Force flight line maintenance supervisor. It takes 18 years to become a skipper of a destroyer and 28 years to groom an armored division commander. For this reason I've been working with President Clinton, Chairman Shelton, Vice Chairman Ralston and all the Service Chiefs, who are here with us today, and the Senior Enlisted Representatives to make sure that military pay and retirement systems adequately reward the experienced men and women in our military.
I'm pleased to announce a package of significant pay raises and retirement improvements for the nation's men and women in uniform. These are going to be part of President Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget.
.............
General Shelton: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And thank you also for your strong and unwavering support of our men and women in uniform.
............Most of you watched closely this past week as we conducted military operations against Saddam Hussein's military forces and his weapons of mass destruction program. Inevitably during these operations attention is focused on the effectiveness of our aircraft, our precision guided munitions and our missiles. Our technology is impressive. But what sets the U.S. military apart and what makes our armed forces the envy of every other nation in the world is the talent, the skill, the dedication -- in short the extraordinary quality of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast guardsmen.
Indeed, the men and women of our armed forces make their complex and dangerous missions look so effortless that we all risk the chance of taking this excellence for granted. We must not allow that to happen. The future of our military effectiveness is in our outstanding young second- and third-term noncommissioned officers and the superb junior and mid-grade officers who lead them.
................Q: This is awfully good news for the people in uniform, but I'd like to go back to some other good news about the four-day operation over Iraq. I understand -- tell me if I'm correct -- that ...
Secretary Cohen: That may be the shortest time we've had to discuss some good news on this subject matter, before we get to the good news on the other, but ...
Q: It's good news there were no Americans killed, no Americans wounded. Were any aircraft even hit? Were any of our forces even hit or nicked in this operation? And how could it could be done in this fashion when there's no casualties?
Secretary Cohen: General Zinni was here to make a presentation earlier, and I believe he indicated we suffered no casualties. To my knowledge there was no wounding of any of our people. No one can really explain what Saddam has done or failed to do, and no one would try to determine what lurks in his mind or in the mission of his armed forces. We'd only be indulging in speculation.
It may be that they're not capable of adequately responding, didn't want to run the risk of having their systems targeted should they turn them on to try to fire upon our aircraft. A number of reasons could be in play, but we're only speculating.
Q: There was a deliberate plan and strategy by the U.S. military to avert damage to equipment or casualties of men, is that correct?
Secretary Cohen: It is always our intent when we carry out any military operation to do so with as little risk to our forces as possible, and with a minimum risk to innocent civilians on the part of the Iraqi people.
...............
Q: One more on Iraq, if you will. I know you've talked about this a lot, but we've heard about targeting the security and the control apparatus for weapons of mass destruction, and we've heard about targeting the means of delivering them. But there do not seem to be any targets that were actually weapons of mass destruction, production facilities. That's probably because you don't where they are. Am I correct in thinking that?
Secretary Cohen: That's the reason why UNSCOM was important to be on the ground. We have consistently for the past several years indicated that UNSCOM must be allowed to carry out its mandate. They are the best means we have of determining on the ground whether or not such facilities are being used either for fertilizer production or for poison weapon production. When Saddam Hussein effectively barred them from carrying out their job, we had to take an alternative course of action, and that was to degrade as best we could his capacity to deliver them. So we did not try to specifically target either factories that might be producing petrochemicals for fertilizer or for drugs or other types of non-weaponized use.
So we're hoping that Saddam Hussein will see the wisdom of allowing the inspectors back to do their job because he'll never find relief from those sanctions until such time as he does so.
Press: Thank you very much.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec1998/t12211998_t221cohn.html
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