• Cover Story
• Table of
  Contents
• Contents By
  Topic
• Columns
  • Brownstein
  • Cook
  • Crook
  • Rauch
  • Stokes
  • Schneider
  • Taylor Jr.
• Regular
  Features
  • Hotline Extra
  • Inside Washington
  • Insiders Poll
  • K Street Corridor
  • People
  • The Week on the Hill

Send to a friend.

* Note that email recipients will see only the first couple of sentences of subscriber-only stories unless they're subscribers.


Eight years ago, George W. Bush campaigned for president promising to transform the American military. The Clinton administration had overcommitted the armed forces to peacekeeping in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti, Bush declared, and those missions had rendered two of the Army's 10 divisions "not ready for duty." As president, Bush pledged, he would gradually pull out of the Balkans and avoid further foreign entanglements: "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building," he said during an October 2000 debate. Instead, Bush promised in a September 1999 speech at South Carolina's Citadel military academy, he would not only accelerate weapons programs that had been delayed or trimmed by the Clinton administration but also "skip a generation of technology" by investing in revolutionary leaps ahead.

Return to story

Recipient Email Address: (separate multiple addresses with commas.)

Your Email Address:

Your Name:

Send format: HTML Text

Add a personal message: (optional)