RUMMY TO CUT $60 BILLION FROM PENTAGON BUDGET.

PREDICTION:

MORE PISSED-OFF ADMIRALS & GENERALS WILL PEDDLE MORE BIASED/ANTI-RUMSFELD LEAKS TO THE OLD MEDIA...

NYTIMES (HAT TIP ... the inimitable DRUDGE):

The Pentagon plans to retire one of the Navy's 12 aircraft carriers, buy fewer amphibious landing ships for the Marine Corps and delay the development of a costly Army combat system of high-technology arms as part of $60 billion in proposed cuts over the next six years, Congressional and military officials said Wednesday. [...] The proposed Pentagon cuts, which include sharply reducing the program for the Air Force's F/A-22 fighter and delaying the purchase of a new Navy destroyer, would for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks slow the growth in Pentagon spending, which has risen 41 percent in that period, to about $420 billion this year. Military and Congressional officials said the Pentagon was looking to trim up to $10 billion in the 2006 budget alone. [...] When Donald H. Rumsfeld became defense secretary in 2001, he took aim at costly weapons systems that he and his top aides said were relics of the cold war. Since then, the Army has canceled the $11 billion Crusader artillery system and the $38 billion Comanche reconnaissance helicopter program.

These difficult cuts -- demanded by the changing nature of warfare and lagging fiscal constraints -- are the kinds of cuts that piss off the Brass and get you NO CREDIT from the Left - or the Old Media they dominate; in fact, it's part of what stokes up the "gotta-get-Rummy" furnace inside the Beltway: angry Brass feed biased leaks to an immoral press that will stoop to anything to "get Rummy".

(For contemporaneous stories which demonstrate the relationship between Rumsfeld's transformation of the Pentagon and the angry Brass and Old Media click HERE and HERE and HERE [all PRE-9/11/2001], and HERE [2002], and HERE [2003].)