Who Needs a Navy When The Force is Strong Within You?

Another Reptilican Rumsfeld hater:

Over lunch at the Four Seasons during a hectic week in New York, a former secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, shared his alarm about America's security.

"We're building only five ships a year; we're on the way to a 150-ship Navy" he says. In his view, that is courting disaster. "That is not enough to cover our security requirements," he says. "Seventy-percent of the world is covered by water. We no longer have basing rights around the world. If you have combat operations going on you need air cover and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that comes from the Navy. To fly one ton of cargo into Iraq takes 14 tons of fuel. That's not cheap. It's got to go by sea, so you have to protect it. The Iranians, for instance, have very good submarines."

The ultimate threat, he says, is China, which "is now building their 600-ship Navy, to fill the vacuum, and they're very good ships."

...While not wanting to be an armchair quarterback, Mr. Lehman is critical not of the decision to go into Iraq, which he claims was justified by the intelligence available at the time, but of the management of the aftermath. "The problem with the insurgency resulted from inadequate planning, or no significant planning, for the post-period to stabilize the country," he says. "One of the historic blunders of all time for the U.S. military was the decision to dismantle the security forces — the police, the army, the civil service, and not having any plan to replace them."

Mr. Lehman despairs about America's intelligence community. "The conclusions of the WMD Commission and the 9/11 Commission were that our leadership is not getting the minimum of what they should expect from the intelligence community," he said. "It's become bloated and bureaucratized. … The U.S. has become the GM of international security. The jihadists are the lean, flexible challengers. It's time for reform."

He also sets high goals, such as his well-known ambition to build a 600-ship Navy. As secretary, it was his job to promote his department; as a civilian, he continues to advocate a stronger maritime presence. He is also an advocate of lean, efficient management in the private and the public sectors. This is not, in his view, the profile of today's Navy.

"Defense costs are skyrocketing out of sight," he says. "Costs for ships are way beyond what they should be, even allowing for inflation. It's being managed by a bureaucracy, not by accountable people. When I was in office my last budget was $11 billion and we built 28 ships; last year's budget was about $11 billion and they built five ships. That's not inflation, that's unilateral disarmament."

Mr. Lehman is equally concerned that bureaucratic bungling has sidetracked the effort to enact the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, on which he served. "We called for ‘leaning out' the 15 different intelligence agencies to create a more agile intelligence effort. Instead, the president added another layer of bureaucracy."

...Mr. Lehman today is actively managing a highly successful private equity shop that invests primarily in aerospace, defense, and marine companies. J.F. Lehman & Company was founded in 1992 and has provided investors with "high double-digit rates of return." He and his partners have just raised their third fund, and currently have well more than $1 billion invested.

In this arena, too, Mr. Lehman has high standards: "We have an average transaction size of $30 to $300 million. We're flying under Wall Street's radar; we look for good technology, intellectual property. We're value investors; we're not chasing the flavor of the year. We want profitable companies with strong market positions. We go in and help management reengineer the business, make it leaner. Sometimes we help management expand globally."

Where does the group look for deals? There are two main sources. "We look at orphans, or third-tier companies owned by conglomerates. Also, we work with entrepreneurs. There are literally thousands of companies out there that grew up in the defense build-up years of the 1970s and 1980s.

"We have a reputation for being good to work with, for closing deals. We don't bait and switch. We're very hands-on. Every company we've owned has ended up better off," he says.

Echoing concerns of many observers, Mr. Lehman is skeptical about the mega-deals making headlines on Wall Street these days. He describes much of this activity as nothing more than financial engineering, and says he doubts that much value is added as assets are swapped in and out of the giant private equity consortiums so popular today.

...Hard work, indeed, but not so timeconsuming that Mr. Lehman isn't engaged in the political game. He is a fan of Senator McCain, and will be working for his presidential campaign...

Not one to destroy a Ring of Power , of course, the General would use it himself to Fight Evildoers.

Never mind. The $election will be Diebolded according to the Chimperor's plan, and the Sith Lord will deal with the Unfaithful when the time comes.

Unless, of course, all the Reptilican incumbents are forced to resign before the $election.

Now, that's funny.