This man, Bush, is scaring the hell out of me...**********************************************************
WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress on Thursday he expects to recommend to President Bush by late summer a new U.S. defense strategy and new approach to sizing the military.
Rumsfeld said he has not yet decided on a new defense strategy but has drawn some preliminary conclusions with senior military officers on how to improve the strategy that has guided U.S. defense planning for more than a decade.
``We need to prepare now for the new and different threats we will face in the decades ahead - not wait until they fully emerge,'' he said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
A key element of the evolving new strategy is improving the capabilities of U.S. forces deployed in Europe and Asia. He provided no details on the kinds of improvements he had in mind.
``We believe this would pose a stronger deterrent in peacetime, allow us to tailor forces for each region, and provide capabilities to engage and defeat adversaries' military objectives wherever and whenever they might challenge the interests of the United States, our allies and friends,'' he said.
Rumsfeld said the Pentagon would invest more in what he called ``rapidly deployable standing joint forces.'' He defined this as troops based abroad that could undertake a wide range of military missions with a minimal need for reinforcement from U.S. territory.
Current U.S. strategy is based on being able to conduct two major regional wars at the same time. Rumsfeld said this strategy was outdated because it overemphasized near-term threats such as North Korea at the expense of preparing for longer-term threats like weapons of mass destruction.
Rumsfeld stressed the need to prepare for emerging and still unknown threats, such as attacks on computer networks.
``There are dangerous capabilities being developed at this moment that we do not know about, and may not know about for years, in come cases until after they are deployed,'' he said
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Love, Annamill