Comrades in arms with penchant for bitter rivalries.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: DEFENSE WATCH

In his latest, and downright grim, communique about the situation in Iraq, retired four-star general and West Point professor Barry McCaffrey marvels at: the miracle of joint-service combat power.

The report, which concludes that U.S. forces in Iraq are "in a position of strategic peril," also offers a glimpse of how four years of grueling deployments there have managed to upend tradition. Officers from earlier generations such as McCaffrey who have closely followed U.S. military actions in Iraq continue to be amazed by the ability of Army and Marine Corps troops on the ground to smoothly blend into integrated units. What is even more astonishing to McCaffrey is that soldiers and Marines are utterly nonchalant about their unity.

"The joint integration of combat power is extremely effective--but is deemed unremarkable by the involved units," McCaffrey writes. "I found a Marine battalion with all three of its fighting companies attached from an Army battalion." Marines and soldiers also are able to synchronize air and ground weapons with impressive speed, he notes.

McCaffrey's ruminations about cross-service teamwork at the grass roots, conversely, stand in sharp contrast to the internecine battles that continue to rage at the Pentagon.

The bureaucratic rivalries come in many forms and varieties, predictably, over money and power. When it comes to money, especially, the underlying motivator is the presumption that the defense budget is a zero-sum game. The Army and the Marine Corps need massive infusions of cash to pay for additional equipment and people as long as they are committed in Iraq; and the Navy and the Air Force will be expected to tighten their belts, possibly for years to come. Already we have seen a procession of Navy and Air Force officers on Capitol Hill pleading their case that they should not have to sacrifice their weapons modernization plans to pay for war expenses.

Big-ticket weapon systems and technology programs in recent years have spawned bitter turf wars. One case in point being the $5 billion procurement of a "joint cargo aircraft," which is to be purchased by both the Army and the Air Force. The Defense Department's decision to allow the Army to buy its own fleet of fixed-wing cargo planes sparked a "roles and missions" tussle, with the Air Force arguing that aerial transportation is inherently its job. Although both services said they have agreed to cooperate, the atmosphere surrounding the program has been less...