2002 Annual Meeting

In Colorado Springs, Colo., last October, your association held its annual meeting that offers members the chance to meet, review the year's events, and look ahead at the year to come. Outgoing Chairman of the Board of Directors Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, USMC-Ret., led attendees through a summary of recent association accomplishments. Headquarters staff directors gave presentations highlighting the association's legislative agenda, financial status, and plans to implement the name change to the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA).

Highlights of the 2002 meeting included guest speaker Gen. Richard B. Myers, USAF, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the introduction of Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., USN-Ret., as president of the association. Each presentation served to affirm MOAA's continuing mission to maintain a strong national defense and preserve the earned entitlements of members of the uniformed services and their families and survivors.

Chairman's Message

It is now both my responsibility and my pleasure to make my annual report to you. I am proud to be with you today for at least two reasons: This month marks our first trip to Colorado Springs for an annual meeting. We're delighted we can join you here for this important day. As you know, we move these annual meetings around the country to give our members a chance to speak directly with the elected representatives on the board as well as the TROA national staff. We want to hear from you; we want to know what's on your mind, how your association can better serve you and safeguard your interests. Those are the reasons we're here today.

Second, I'm proud I can stand and tell you that your association is strong and continues to make progress on your behalf. One of the reasons for this progress is that you, our members - especially our council and chapters - are equal participants in the important process of supporting a strong national defense. As we have said many times, TROA doesn't have command relationships with its members, councils, and chapters. It's a partnership. We work the effort together. And when we say TROA is a family, we truly mean it.

Looking back on the past few months, our nation and military are not the same as [they were] one year ago. We have again been reminded that the many freedoms that we enjoy each day are bought for us at a dear price by men and women in uniform. And our nation has renewed appreciation of their service. Those men and women in turn have been given new roles and missions and, despite the increased tempo of operations, have responded with the same dedication that was shown by their predecessors. And many of those are here in this room today.

This past year has prompted your board and your staff to resolve to do everything we can to ensure the national defense remains strong. For us, this means helping to ensure our government continues to provide competitive compensation and fair conditions for the services and encourage good people to continue serving. This includes [offering] active duty pay that is fully comparable with civilian pay for the same skills and experience [and] affordable and available health care for themselves and their families; caring for surviving spouses and their family when the military member is no longer living; and making sure those who dedicated their professional lives to their country are properly com- pensated after they retire.

These are the building blocks of our uniformed services. And our primary job is to see that they remain firmly in place.

It is a basic tenet of our profession: Uniformed people look out for each other, both on the battlefield and off. TROA formally recognized this more than 50 years ago when we started the TROA Scholarship Fund. Shortly after Sept. 11, we created within the scholarship fund the American Patriot Scholarship Program. This special fund will provide educational assistance to sons and daughters of military members who are killed while in active service.

[The fund] has now grown to almost $350,000, which I'm pleased to note has come from the donations of private citizens and members of the TROA family. The generosity will allow us to provide at least six annual scholarships for children of those who literally gave all for their country.

On the home front, we have said our farewells and deep thanks to Lt. Gen. Mike Nelson, USAF-Ret. And we extend a warm welcome to our new president, Vice Adm. Norbert R. Ryan Jr., USN-Ret. Admiral Ryan just completed an extraordinary active duty career, serving as the director of legislative affairs for the Navy and more recently as chief of Navy personnel. He has the background, skills, and clarity of mind to keep us on the path of progress. I know he will welcome the support of each of you in the years to come.

He also is supported by superbly talented members of the TROA staff, who work very hard each day to improve the lives of association members and their families. Our Officer Placement Service continues to help members who are getting ready to transition to postmilitary careers. Our Benefits Information Department, world-class experts in a wide variety of subjects, continues to answer complex questions about compensation and benefits of all types.

Our Member Service Center gives you a real, live human being, and a very knowledgeable human being, who stands ready to answer your questions when you call. All these experts and more stand ready to help you. Let us be your information provider.

Legislatively, we have helped secure TRICARE For Life (TFL) and TRICARE Senior Pharmacy (TSRx) for our older members. We've won several pay and benefits improvements for our active, Reserve, and Guard forces.

One thing that we're particularly proud of is how we successfully helped folks over 55, TROA members and nonmembers alike, move into TFL and TSRx. Heroic efforts on the part of the TROA staff and our third-party insurance administrator, Marsh Affinity Group Services, enabled 155,000 TROA members and their families, who had been MEDIPLUS® Supplemental Insurance members, to transition smoothly to TFL. We estimate that those 155,000 people immediately began to save an average of $1,600 a year per person. We are now out of the Medicare supplement insurance business for one reason: Our members who are older than 65 no longer need it. We worked ourselves out of a job because it was the right thing to do.

Even with all these successes, however, much remains to be done. We continue our fight stretching back over several years to eliminate the Survivor Benefit Plan Social Security offset for [surviving spouses] at age 62. It's unfair. We're letting both Congress and the public know that.

We are also continuing to work on funding administrative problems within the TRICARE system that affect our younger retirees. We need to get the problems fixed as quickly as possible. It remains very prominent on our radar screen.

Obviously we've been working very hard to win the concurrent receipt issue. We hope Congress will finally provide some relief this year. We had hoped that we would have an answer to that for you today, but as you know, Congress is still in session and could very possibly be in for another couple of weeks.

As our secretary reported, we had a record vote turnout in this year's biennial election, prompted, we think, by the proposed name change. Almost 90 percent of our members voting on this issue voted in favor of changing our name to the Military Officers Association of America, or MOAA. We believe this new name will better reflect whom it is we serve and also help the national association and our chapters recruit more members.

Our new name will become effective on the 1st of January, 2003. Because we regard the name change as such an important event in our association's history, we've added Lt. Col. John Miller, USAF-Ret., who runs our Contract Services and Marketing Department, to this morning's agenda. He will tell you about our plans to implement the name change.

During our many contacts with members during the voting process, it surprised us to learn that many members did not know TROA has had active duty, Reserve, and National Guard members for decades. We've also been working the issues important to these groups during the entire time. We hope to attract even more of them to MOAA; after all, today's active duty, Reserve, and Guard officers are tomorrow's retirees. It's to our advantage to recruit and retain them now. Having said that, I want to reiterate strongly that our strong support for and our emphasis on the retiree community and the retired members will not weaken in the slightest. We still will be fighting hard to protect your interests, just as we have in the past.

This is my final report as your chairman. And I cannot close without expressing my deep and abiding thanks to our TROA membership for getting actively involved in the issues and making changes happen. I'm also grateful to my fellow directors, all of them volunteers, for their unselfish and dedicated work regarding our association.

I also thank Mike Nelson for his inspirational leadership as our president for more than seven years; and Admiral Ryan for the vision and energy he has already shown in only one month on the job as president; and the hard-working TROA staff, who serve our members so well and keep the organizational machinery humming on a day-to-day basis. All of these wonderful people have made my job a great pleasure.

TROA, soon to become MOAA, is a marvelous organization, one that is recognized in many circles for its integrity, effectiveness, and world-class service to its members. I'm immensely proud of that reputation. Yes, we will change our name, but we won't change the way we do business, or the way we serve our members and our nation.

Thank you all for being members of the TROA family and allowing me to have the privilege of serving as your chairman.

President's Report

Thank you, Mister Chairman. I'm delighted also to be here this morning. I've been in the saddle as your president now for just about 30 days since Sept. 5. And I'm also immensely proud to be part of the great TROA family. It's a terrific organization with an outstanding board led by the chairman, Gen. Joe Hoar, who truly has been an inspiration to all of us; the hardworking staff; and you, the very loyal, patriotic, and dedicated members who make our family what it is today.

My chapter visits, daily letters, e-mails, and General Myers' remarks this morning remind me that TROA's vital purpose is to promote a strong national defense. And we can never forget that our day-to-day activities affect literally millions of current and past servicemembers and their families around the world. We want only the very best for them, especially those now serving, as they face the challenges that General Myers mentioned this morning in making sure that we maintain the peace around the world.

In my first few weeks, I've seen a lot and met a lot of very dedicated people on our board and staff and among our many members. And I look forward to continuing that in my travels, and when you visit our headquarters in Alexandria, Va. There's no question, as General Hoar mentioned, that our former president, Mike Nelson, left the organization in outstanding shape. He helped me transition like the superb professional that he is, and he gave me a good perspective on what needs to be done in the future. Mike and his wife, Barbie, are a remarkable couple who will always be an important part of the TROA family.

Although I'm the new guy and I'm much more comfortable listening to all of you, the experienced veterans of this family, it is my duty to report to you and bring you up to speed on some of our activities.

General Hoar thoroughly covered the enormous progress we've made on transitioning our members to TRICARE For Life (TFL) and TRICARE Senior Pharmacy (TSRx). Let me just say as the new guy, though, if anybody ever doubted whether the goal of TROA is to serve our members, I think we put that case to bed with what we've done in TFL. We put ourselves out of the Medicare supplement business, as we should, and we ceased all reasonable debate, I think, on whether or not our best interests are served in going after what you, the members, want. We've done it; we've walked the walk. And my pledge is we will continue to do that for you, the membership.

But as with General Hoar, I do want to acknowledge that we know we have a lot more things to accomplish for you all in the legislative area and the policy area. And we know that's what we're all about. So we intend to deliver.

I can assure you that we will be redoubling our efforts, as General Hoar mentioned, to get that law changed regarding the Survivor Benefit Plan offset for our members and all our service personnel.

In the area of personal affairs, we changed [that department's] name to Benefits Information. That four-person organization answers more phone calls and e-mails than any other group in the world. I think they deliver to you, all our members, and help you get those benefits that you have hard earned, and make you aware of information that can improve your quality of service. We're going to keep that going. I would just suggest that as our group in Benefits Information goes around the country, I hope that all the chapters do what the Colorado chapters do, and that is, use it as a time in these retiree appreciation days to recruit new members to your local chapters.

I have great interest in our councils and our chapters. They are the bedrock of TROA, in my opinion. I will do all I can to support that bedrock. I was privileged earlier in the month to go down to Savannah, Ga., with my wife, Judy, and meet with the southeastern councils and chapters. And we set a record for attendance down there, which tells me that the word is spreading - this was our fifth regional symposium - what a great job we're doing in this two-day event to make sure that we are close, as the general said, to make sure that our membership and those of us in Washington on the board of directors are thinking alike about what the goals and objectives ought to be.

That turnout in Savannah and the work that was done down there was fantastic. I want to personally thank all the board of directors who have given us the resources to make this happen. And I also want to thank the board of directors for sharing their talents with us to make these symposia the big success they are. I can pledge to you we're going to continue that effort.

I'm also happy to say that we have 424 chapters. Some of them that we were a little bit worried about have come back strong thanks to the work of the members of the local areas and national team. We're pleased to have a new chapter coming in in Peoria, Ill., in the future as well.

Technologically, our database is where it needs to be. You'll be hearing a lot of what we need to be doing to make sure we are leveraging that database to understand what your needs are and better deliver services to each of you.

General Hoar mentioned [TROA's Officer Placement Service]. Col. Buzz Buse [USMC-Ret.] and his team do a fantastic job in this area. They've helped thousands of men and women transition to the civilian sector. They will continue to do that. They will continue to have the national meeting that they have, the career fair in D.C., and continue to deliver, I think, for our members and those who are thinking about becoming members in the contract services area.

We mentioned that Lt. Col. John Miller [USAF-Ret.] would be up here this morning talking a little bit about the name change and the opportunities that we have here. But we're also going to be talking to you very soon about the member services that we're going to be delivering to you, including a new credit card that delivers points to you all so you have choices ranging from trading those points in for cash or airline tickets. We think this is going to be an exciting new benefit. We also have a new cell phone service coming your way that I think all of us need in helping us determine what is the best, most economical provider of cell phone service in a given area. Those are new things John will be talking about in the magazine, and you'll be hearing more about those.

I'm not going to talk about our scholarship fund any more except to say thank you to all of you, our members, for what you do to make our scholarship fund the vibrant agent that it is for supporting our men and women. We intend to expand that scholarship program. And I want to thank you all for your generosity and hope you will help us to expand it. I think it's going to be a critical thing in the future in helping us to attract more new members to MOAA.

Where do I see the organization going? As a sailor, I say steady as she goes. There's no question that this ship is in sound, good shape, and our course is true. What I would want to tell you is that, with the help of the board and the staff, all I would like to do is continue to raise the bar in support to you, our wonderful members. Whether that's lobbying, delivering new member services, working with our chapters or councils, all of those things, we're going to raise the bar. We will never forget this is your association. And we are all proud to serve you.

During this past year we have increased our ability to communicate with you all. I think you know that we have some basic e-mails that we send from almost every department. And I would just encourage you to continue to use those services, and get online if you're not.

In the magazine area, we have the finest magazine in the world. We're going to start a new magazine in February of 2003. It will be called Today's Officer. It will be coming to those under 60 and helping us to grow that part of the membership and to retain those members where we have the highest [lapse rate]. It's an experiment, and we'll see how our readership likes it through surveys after a certain period of time.

I know what you're thinking, so let me answer the question. Our current magazine, The Retired Officer Magazine, still will be sent to every member. This other magazine will be in addition to the one everyone receives. The Retired Officer Magazine's name will change in January to Military Officer.

Since I brought up changing of names, I also want to say a few words about the name change and members' recent vote. I think you spoke very loudly about the importance of change to open up the opportunities to better serve you all and better represent you in Washington with the clout that we need to make an impact on [Congress]. Having that membership clout and growing that membership is very important. And this name change will help us do that. You've seen the rationale.

I echo what General Hoar said. Let it be clear that the association will not change its emphasis. Our commitment to working for you all - our membership - will not lessen. Rather, I think the name change will better reflect what we've been doing for decades: supporting our active duty members as well as retired servicemembers. I think we'll be able to take proper credit for the work we've always done.

In summary, I'm confident we have the talent, strategy, and resources necessary to allow our association to continue to accomplish our noble mission listed on page one of that magazine, and we'll never change where that mission is located. Yes, we have, as General Hoar mentioned, made remarkable progress in improving the quality of life for all of our members. We know there's much left to do. I, as your new president, relish the challenge and the opportunity to serve alongside each of you.

Chief Financial Officer's Report

TROA's financial statements for the year 2001 were prepared by the audit firm of Johnson and Lambert and Co. and were published in the October issue of The Retired Officer Magazine. TROA's finances continue to be in excellent shape, and our auditors confirmed that in the 2001 audit report, giving the TROA Scholarship Fund and TROA an A-plus and unqualified opinion. That is "auditor's speak" for an excellent report.

The result is in large measure due to the careful stewardship by two of your committees on the board of directors: the Finance Committee chaired by Adm. Jerry Johnson, USN-Ret., and the Investment Committee chaired by Rear Adm. Jesse Hernandez, USN-Ret.

Let me give you the highlights from the 2001 report, which was a challenging year. As a result of the losses in our investment portfolio, expenses exceed revenues by $6.5 million. Net assets decreased by $5.9 million to $78.6 million.

For the scholarship fund we received $2.1 million in donations and bequests, including $170,000 donated to the American Patriot Scholarship Fund. As Admiral Ryan said, that's up [to more than] $350,000. As a result, we were able to help 1,450 students in 2002, including seven children who lost their [active-service] parents.

In summary, your board of directors, in particular your Finance and Investment committees, has ensured TROA is well-financed. That completes my report.

Guest Speaker

It's really a pleasure to come out here and especially address groups like this. That means so much not only to our veterans, but it also has an impact on how we take care of our people. That's one reason it's fun. It's also fun because I can tell the veterans, the retired officers, how much I appreciate their service to our country, how much it means to us that are still serving. It's great to be with you.

I'm not going to say much else until my serious remarks, but I would like to comment on Admiral Ryan. As I recall you have a P-3 background - is that right? It turns out on my staff, I don't know how many P-3 officers I have on my staff. … I'm surrounded not only by Navy but P-3 folks, which means I've got to talk about a P-3 a lot more than I think it deserves. I will be able to tell if there's a correlation now that he's left our posting. We'll be able to tell if it's going to have any effect at all.

We've been at this war on terrorism now about a year. It will be a year Monday; that's our anniversary date, Monday, when they went into Afghanistan. We now have a coalition of more than 90 countries that are gathered. A year ago we didn't have that. We've built up a coalition of 90 countries. Some of them don't provide forces but [rather] things like fuel for our ships in the Pacific. The Japanese government has given 48 million gallons of fuel for our Navy ships and some of our airplanes. People contribute in ways that are consistent with their constitution and their government.

We have the Romanian ground force involved in combat with our forces in Afghanistan today. And so big countries with big budgets, little countries with not much budget, it sort of spans the whole spectrum of what you might expect.

We've used all instruments of national power. The president very early after Sept. 11 said this is a war unlike any other war. We have to go forward not just with the military response, but there's also going to be a diplomatic piece, there's going to be a huge intelligence piece, there's going to be a piece for Treasury and Justice, and so forth. We've seen that.

We've rounded up and shut off funds to the al-Qaida to the tune of about $112 million that the United States has defunded. That's a pretty substantial amount of money for an organization like that. Intel sharing between countries has never been as robust as it is today. Could it be better? Yes. But it's really robust.

We've got some interesting partners - people you would not think would be in this fight with us that have joined the fight because they know, they understand the enormity.

In addition, of course, we've trained some Philippine armed forces up to make them more effective in counterterrorism. Unfortunately you probably read just a couple of days ago we lost an Army Special Forces NCO in Mindanao to a bomb. It severely wounded a captain who was with him, who I think will be all right, according to my last report. But this is just a reminder this is very, very dangerous business, no matter where we go. We've been in Yemen. We've trained some Yemeni forces to be better at counterterrorism. We're in Georgia to do the same thing there. They have a piece of their country that is not well-controlled by the government. They need help in training their forces to go deal with that.

Okay, so that's sort of general. If you go to Afghanistan - I bet if we passed out a little quiz a year ago and said, "How do you think the United States is going to react in Afghanistan?" We might have had, answer A might have been, bomb. We're going to bomb with Cruise missiles. I bet a lot of people would've checked that block. I don't think anybody would've checked the block that said we're going to Afghanistan, and we're going to try to leverage people in there that have a common objective, that is to rid the country of the Taliban. We're going to use very few ground forces, but we're going to use ground forces very early in this fight.

If you remember, what was it, about a week or 10 days - I don't remember the exact date, I should know - when we put a raid deep into Afghanistan with ground forces. I mean, it was a week or so after we did - I think it was about a week, seven days after we started the campaign, we had folks on the ground in the middle of the night, in the Taliban leaders' compound, a very substantial compound, just to show them that we were very, very serious about this. I don't think anybody would have checked the right block in that multiple choice test.

Then, if you would've said [that] in a few months the Taliban is going to fall, and that we're going to have a handful of soldiers on the ground - and when I say soldiers, I mean all services because everybody was there - but with just a handful we're going to bring this regime down, I don't think we would have gotten that right in our multiple choice test either. But that's what's happened. So, there [have] been some great successes. They've had over 2 million refugees come back, and on and on it goes.

Having said that, the situation in Afghanistan is still not where it needs to be. We've got a provisional government that's working pretty well, but it's challenged by people who don't want that kind of government. We've got pockets of Taliban and al-Qaida in pieces and parts of Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan that will be a problem for some time to come. They're such small pockets now it's very difficult to go after them. That's exactly what we're doing.

That's kind of an update on where we are on the war on terrorism that you read most about in the paper. Something we don't read very much about in the paper at all is that while we were doing that, we also had to defend our country in ways that we've never had to do before. It takes you back to World War II, but even then the thought of having fighter [combat air patrols] and fighters on alert - even during the Cold War we didn't have the number of fighters. I don't think we had this number of fighters on alert. I'd have to think about it. There might have been a time, maybe. But certainly not in the last two decades, not in the last three decades have we had fighters on alert, the combat air patrols, the number of Coast Guard and Navy personnel that are guarding our ports and our harbors, the number of folks that we have augmenting other agencies with Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol, so forth. This has been, and people in this room know all too well, a pretty big effort. It's offense and it's defense.

People often ask, "Why can't we just concentrate on the defense?" I think we found out on Sept. 11 you can't build a wall high enough, or put enough barbed wire out there, to keep individuals from creating mass casualties. That's what we saw. We've got to take the fight to the enemy, so that's what we've done.

The president, to go on the defense, as you know, is trying to set up a department of homeland security. This is still being debated in the Congress. One of these days white smoke will come out, I guess, and we'll figure out if that's going to happen. It's a very important concept. I'm going to talk a little about what the military is going to do that goes right along with that.

What do I worry about on the war on terrorism? Let's go back to the president's goals. He set these out right after Sept. 11. He said we have to destroy the great international terrorist organizations; we've got to deny them safe haven; we've got to inhibit weapons of mass destruction from falling into their hands. Those were his three goals.

What I worry about is the nexus, I think, between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. We saw airliners being used as weapons of mass destruction if you recall on Sept. 11. There should be no doubt from what you've seen on TV, what we've seen on intel channels and from our debriefings of the al-Qaida detainees and from the captured documents that they are very interested in chemical, biological, and - for that matter - radiological and nuclear weapons. If they can get their hands on them and if they can deploy them here in the United States or in the western world, they will do so. That would be my worry.

If you remember John Walker Lindh recently revealed, he said his information was, when he was in Afghanistan, there were going to be three waves of attack on the United States, each one more severe than the last. The first wave, of course, was the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and perhaps the Capitol or the White House. There will be two other waves which, if successful, will be more catastrophic. I don't know if that's true or not; that's what he has said. We do know they continue to plan.

What I worry about is that nexus between weapons of mass destruction and terrorists who don't play by the rules that we know, and don't hold dear what we hold dear, and would dearly love to see our way of life be interrupted or come to an end. That's for most of the world, not just the United States for that matter.

So that debate right now on that nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is the debate going on in Congress in terms of the congressional resolution vis-à-vis Iraq. That's a lot of what we're talking about. It's the kind of debate that is now very public. Your voices ought to be heard as well. You ought to think about what it is you want your government to do. There are lots of choices here. The president says [it is not an option] to do nothing. Of course that's absolutely right. There are other choices. And the Congress is debating those. One of these days we'll see how the Congress feels about this. It's a serious issue, one you ought to be engaged in as well with whomever you talk to. It's a very, very serious issue.

At the same time as the war on terrorism, let's go on to the things we have to do. You've heard the secretary of Defense say on numerous occasions, and I have as well, and I firmly believe, while you're working the war on terrorism you have to work other issues in the military. Transformation's a buzzword for us. It's not just the buzzword of the day. We're always trying to transform. We're going to transform well into the future. There are no silver bullets out there. We have to get ourselves ready for the 21st century.

I would tell you, and I think the people that are here, you would probably agree that during the Cold War we did not have to be particularly light on our feet in our thinking. We counted on deterrence; that was a big part of it. Then we tried to stay up with or get ahead of our primary adversary, the Soviet Union. The kind of agility and thinking we needed then is not the same kind we need now. We have to transform the way we think, primarily. The transformation is going to be more up here. It's not a new tank, or it's not going to be a tank with wheels instead of tracks. That's not transformation. Maybe that makes you more mobile, and maybe that helps you in transformation, but transformation is much more than that.

This past week we did some very significant things regarding transformation; probably the three biggest things being done to our military probably since 1947 as a matter of fact, if I might be so bold. I'd have to check that for sure. You guys in the "brain trust" down here will keep me straight.

When we came out here we cased the flag of the U.S. Space Command, which we did on Oct. 1. Then we uncased the flag of the U.S. Northern Command, very significant events. Now we have a military command responsible for the planning and the resourcing of the defense of our country that brings all the elements - air, land, sea, space information - brings all the elements together to defend this country. It incorporates, of course, the North American Aerospace Defense Command that's already out here. This is a new command. It's got a new mission. It's going to take them probably a year to reach their full capability. They'll have members of Coast Guard there, they'll have members of the National Guard [who] will be part of the staff because of the ties to the states and the first responders and those who support them, in many cases the National Guard units. Could be active duty.

This is a big thing in how we're thinking. It's not new; we've been thinking about it for years. Since Sept. 11 last year, a year ago, it sort of increased that sense of urgency. I said we cased the U.S. Space Command flag. That was a big step, because that same day we went to Omaha and we cased the Strategic Command flag.

The Strategic Command flag you know as the Nuclear Command. We cased that, and we unfurled a brand-new flag. This flag was still called Strategic Command because we couldn't think of a better name. Strategic will probably be in bold letters now, because it's a new strategic command, and it takes the functions the space command has and the functions that the strategic command has and puts them together. One of these days we may call it global command. They've got a global perspective. They've got the high ground of space. There are lots of new missions that no command has that we're thinking about giving to this new strategic command. It sets us on a path we think is appropriate to the 21st century. Some in this room probably remember Strategic Air Command if you're Air Force. Then we went to Strategic Command. Now we have Strategic Command, but it has no resemblance to what we had in the past.

On the 2nd of October, the next day, because we couldn't fit it all in in three days, we went to Norfolk and we had a change of command for Joint Forces Command, another major command in the U.S. military. It wasn't just a change of command. It was also a huge change in focus, because now we have one command that's dedicated to joint experimentation - and I say joint, all service - experimentation and training. This will make us much better at our war-fighting tasks in the future.

For some of the veterans here, you're going to be hard-pressed to come up and tell me a story on how you integrated with another service. Whatever service you came from, you're going to be hard-pressed to tell me how you integrated when you fought every battle you fought. My guess is you might have done a very good job of deconfliction. Marines, you take this over here. And Army, you take that over there. It's not integration, it's deconfliction. We found out in Afghanistan you've got to integrate the capabilities of all the services in ways we haven't done before. It worked. We have to do more of that in the future, bring all the various capabilities together. That's what we're talking about. Joint Forces Command pretty much has the responsibility to help us do that.

That's three pretty big things that happened last week. That's probably not the top thing you worry about in your day-to-day life. But if you look back and reflect, it's a big change from a year ago, and it may be the biggest change in our military structure since 1947. I'll think about that for a while. It's going to be close to whatever's running second and third, I'll tell you that.

Let me tell you where you can come in to help me, the president, and the secretary of Defense in our mission here. First of all, it's my belief that we are all players in this war on terrorism. This is not like anything. There's no sports analogy that fits. The football game we're going to watch later between Air Force and Navy, not everyone's on the field at the same time. They have benches. You can tell on the scoreboard who is winning, who's losing. They play by the rulebook.

None of that applies to the war on terrorism. Our adversaries don't play by the rule book. There's no scoreboard. It makes us all kind of uncomfortable because you can't pick up a paper to see who's winning and who's losing because this is a very different adversary. Then there really is no bench, because we're all players in one way or another. The analogy to World War II, we're not asking the public to do what they did during World War II. It makes people uneasy, and they say, "This can't be a real war if I'm not being asked to sacrifice with the rationing that takes place," and so forth.

Well, I can guarantee you it's a real war. It requires the intellectual and moral participation of this country, if not the physical and the other kind of labor and so forth of World War II. It's just as important; in fact, it's more important. This is clearly a threat to our way of life. That's essentially what it's all about.

What you can do is, you're the best ones to espouse this because you know. You've been there. You've fought in combat. You've been in the military service, most of you. We have got to be patient. We have to see this through. What I worry about this war is that the public will start to worry about other things. I worry that we'll become apathetic and start to worry about other things. And we have not had another tragedy for a year. That's a very good thing. To think that we're out of the woods in that regard is, I think, a false hope. I think we have to keep our guard up.

So, continue to keep people reminded about how we felt after Sept. 11 and the danger to our way of life. They absolutely wanted to impact exactly what they did: our economy. Not that our economic slowdown is due solely to Sept. 11, but it had an effect. All you have to do is ask the airlines, and not just U.S. airlines, but tourism around the world. We're all connected in ways that we weren't several decades ago. So patience to stay with it. Even if you're not reading about activity in the paper, there's a lot of activity I can guarantee you that goes on every day.

As I mentioned, we had a great Army Special Forces nco killed by a bomb by the Abu Sayyaf group, most likely, by initial implications. Of course they have links to al-Qaida. That was targeted at the U.S. personnel. There are people working on our behalf, as you know, very hard, day in and day out. So I need your help on that count. Again, I can't think of a better group than this group. You represent us so well for lots of other issues. But you need to represent us well on this issue, I would say, because your voice is, people have confidence in your voice, and they listen to what you say. I think if you can help in that way that would be useful.

Last comment: I didn't get into much of the technology and some of the changes we saw in Afghanistan. We've made wonderful use of American technology. One small example of weapons today for the so-called joint direct attack munitions, it's a bomb guided by the [global positioning system] signals. It's fairly accurate. It's fairly large. And you don't care what the weather is. You can drop it from many, many platforms: bombers, fighters. It really tends to revolutionize the battlefield in that way. As important as that is, and other technologies we can talk about a long time, fun things to talk about, let me tell you this: In the end, it's our people that are the driving force behind any success we've had. And you would've passed that if you put that in the multiple-choice quiz, you know it's the people that make all the difference.

I think about the battle, so-called Battle of Anaconda, which was the last big battle against the al-Qaida. We thought there were 300 to 500 al-Qaida in the place the Russians called "the meat grinder," because as they went in to try to root out the Afghanistan folks, they were ground up in large numbers. These people, the adversary was dug in. They had everything well in place. Their mortar placements were measured. They had everything. They had great equipment. They had as good equipment as our forces - in some cases better. They had great stuff.

We went in there with a force much smaller. Nobody goes on the offense with a smaller force. We put this together. The reason we were successful was because our soldiers were involved, and the sailors involved. There were airmen involved. There were Marines involved in that whole effort. And they were fighting over here on Pikes Peak, essentially. It's 10,000 to 12,000 feet. It's cold and miserable. They took the fight right to the enemy and did a superb job.

Let me just end with that. As you probably have no doubt, as you can tell from the Junior rotc people that came in and put on that magnificent posting of the colors, we're in good hands. You go out and talk to the majority of our folks 19 to 20 years old, you'll see commitment, dedication. They never whimper. They never ask to come home.

One guy said he wanted to come home. He said, "I want to come home for a week. I want to change my clothes, I want to get some laundry done, then I want to come right back here to Afghanistan." He'd been there from day one. He'd marched out; he'd ridden the horses; he'd done all that stuff. He was in Kabul at the point when I saw him. He said, "If I could just get home for a week, maybe two, then I'm going to come right back." That doesn't matter what service. That's pretty much the attitude. I'm proud. I know you know that, but I'm here to tell you.