If you're looking to cut the size of government ....

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: TILTING at windmills - Brief article

One mistake Tea Partiers make when they rant about big government is that they fail to discriminate. Sometimes government is too big. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has recently pointed out, the Pentagon's military bureaucracy needs trimming. He proposes a 5 percent reduction in the number of generals and admirals. In fact, even more cuts could be made. A veteran Pentagon critic, Winslow Wheeler, notes that during World War II, we had one general for every 6,382 enlisted men. Now we have one for every 1,519 soldiers. Even more...