Word: pentagonal
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...means of bookkeeping switches, Budget Director Joseph Dodge was able to trim Harry Truman's 1954 defense budget from $41.5 billion to $38 billion with little or no damage to buildup goals. But last week Dodge let the Pentagon know that he plans to get the 1955 budget down to $35 billion by cutting: 1) the Air Force's goal from 143 groups to 110, and 2) the Navy's supercarrier program (from three carriers to two) and other naval activities. With the approval of Defense Secretary Wilson, Dodge issued an order restraining the Air Force, which...
When former Defense Secretary Robert Lovett had his say about the ammunition shortage, he leveled an accusing finger at U.S. Army Ordnance and the red-tape jungle in the Pentagon (TIME, April 20). Last week, from the depths of the jungle, Army spokesmen pointed right back. Their fingers were aimed at the Defense Secretary's chair, and the Truman-appointed civilians (including Lovett) who sat in it from the beginning of the Korean...
Like Billy Budd, the general might have come to life on a battlefield removed from his world of the pentagon. In this setting, he too often cramps the other, more real characters, who seem straining to become human. A state department official, another general, a newspaper reporter--these characters are nearer our reality, although all of them are just a bit too good. even their mistakes occurred because they were always doing what they thought was right...
...trouble, McNeil explained, is "the basic system." To illustrate "the system," he produced charts of the red-tape jungle of contract-placing. "There are people going home tired every night with unfinished work," he said, "yet I feel we have too many [people in the Pentagon]. Why do we have too many? I think those charts tell the story...
...parallel to Pentagon red tape was the drill for loading, firing and reloading a musket in the British army in the 17th century. The drill was designed to eliminate individual error and to achieve uniform rate of fire. Its 31 orders, as recorded by Robert Graves in Sergeant Lamb's America: "March with your rest in your hand! March, and with your musket carry your rest! Unshoulder your musket! Poise your musket! Join your rest to your musket! Take forth your Match! Blow off your coal! Cock your match! Try your match! Guard, blow, and open your priming...