Defense (July 2009)

I consider myself blessed to serve as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, which from my perspective is the best committee in Congress. The committee’s 62 members come from every corner of the country and reflect diverse political philosophies, but together we find common purpose in our efforts to do our very best to provide the necessary resources to keep Americans safe and protect U.S. national security interests.

Americans remain outraged by our federal government’s actions before and after Hurricane Katrina that inflicted $300 billion in damage to the Gulf Coast. Did you know that the federal government is acting to protect the president, but doing little or nothing to prevent $1 trillion to $2 trillion in damage from a known threat with the largest geographic footprint of any natural disaster according to the National Academies of Science? Sadly, that is the current reality.

Guam, an island territory of the United States, is located 900 miles north of the equator in the Western Pacific. From four to eight miles in width and 32 miles long, Guam covers approximately 220 square miles. It is truly a tropical paradise.

Two years have passed since a Washington Post news story revealed some instances of inadequate treatment of soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

As chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, I am charged with ensuring that our veterans receive the very best care, honor, and respect that a grateful nation can bestow. I am extremely pleased that Congress made good on an important promise to our veterans by passing the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, one of the key bipartisan achievements of the 110th Congress. Providing veterans with the means to better themselves through educational opportunities has been a goal of this nation since 1944, when the first G.I. Bill of Rights laid a foundation for veterans to have the support necessary to readjust to civilian life.  Now, in 2009, this country has come together to fully invest in the future of our heroes and support those who have borne the heaviest burdens of war.

Refusing to acknowledge the world had changed, the Polish military in the 1920s and 1930s stubbornly clung to tactics, strategy and weaponry used in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919. In what is now considered something of a cruel punch line in the chronicles of history, Polish cavalry units and a few obsolete tanks had the misfortune of being the first military to face Hitler’s newly unleashed “blitzkrieg” concept. Polish horses and ponies proved to be little more than speed bumps on the way to Warsaw for the Nazi’s fast-moving Panzer tank divisions and Luftwaffe aircraft. Within two short weeks Warsaw was surrounded.