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Fort turns 64 on a sad note By ADD SEYMOUR JR. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 11/05/05 Carl Rhodenizer didn't know where Atlanta — let alone the Atlanta General Depot — was located when the Army sent him here in 1951. But the Virginia native grew so close to "The Depot," now known as Fort Gillem, that he never again lived more than five miles from the base. That's why Fort Gillem's 64th anniversary party on Friday evoked sadness for some longtime Clayton County residents. With the base scheduled to close, there won't be many more celebrations. "It's been a...

White House Loses Appeal on Base ClosingFriday September 9, 2005 12:31 AMBy GINA HOLLAND Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The base closing commission hit a snag Thursday over the deadline for its recommendations to the White House, as the administration lost a last-minute bid to get the Supreme Court to intervene and protect the panel's plan. What was to be a routine paperwork delivery of those proposals to President Bush was threatened by a cross-country legal fight. Judges in Connecticut and Tennessee blocked the panel from recommending changes at local Air National Guard bases. The Tennessee decision was overruled...

When then-House Republican backbencher Dick Armey came up with the concept of an independent base-closing commission in the mid-1980s, the idea was to make it easier for the political system to do the right thing... As we're seeing in the current round of base closings, even the Armey method is having a hard time surviving the ability of Members to sabotage the process.... The Pentagon has proposed closing a record 62 major bases and 775 small installations to save $48.8 billion over 20 years and reposition the armed forces to face current threats.... Before the Brac Commission was even in...

WASHINGTON - Military installations in California, Maine and Virginia were added Tuesday to the hundreds that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had already proposed for closing or shrinking. ADVERTISEMENT The Navy Broadway Complex in San Diego and the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, were placed on the list of facilities to be closed. The Naval Master Jet Base at the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia, which the Pentagon proposed trimming in size, would be reduced even further or shut down, the base-closing commission voted. The commission was voting Tuesday on whether to add facilities in 11 states and...

The Pentagon's plan to move an Oregon Air National Guard fighter jet squadron out of Portland would tear a dangerous hole in the nation's antiterrorism network and put millions of Pacific Northwest residents at risk, Oregon's governor and congressional representatives warned a federal panel Friday. Not only that, they said, the move wouldn't save taxpayers any money, which was one of the main reasons the Pentagon gave in proposing the move. "It looks like we're tacking up a vacancy sign on our air base and putting out a welcome mat for our enemies," Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said during a...

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) speaks out against plans to close the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard during a rally held at the shipyard in Kittery, Maine, May 16, 2005. Last week the Pentagon recommended the closure of 33 major domestic U.S. military bases and the realignment of 29 more, threatening a hard economic blow to many communities across the country. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi

When Wes Clark ran for President, I was all for it. Here was a guy, the former commander of NATO who wanted to become the President. Soon thereafter I realized that just because Clark came from the military, he certainly was not a conservative. Clark took the pulpit to criticize Bush on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea without really putting together any ideas of what he would have done differently except that he would have built a 'coalition'. In a speech to the Arkansas Associated Press Managing Editors Association, Clark said that because of the recent round of military...

Lawmakers and residents in towns with military bases targeted for closure promised Friday to fight to get off the list, saying their communities would be crippled and national security would be damaged. "The battle starts today," one mayor said. South Dakota's Ellsworth Air Force Base, home to intercontinental missiles and long-range bombers during its 63-year history, and the nation's first submarine base, in Connecticut, were among the 150 military installations from Maine to Hawaii listed in the first round of base closures in a decade. The bases are an important, often crucial, source of jobs, and communities and politicians have...

The Associated Press SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Sept. 23 — The United States will close its Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in eastern Puerto Rico within the next six months, the territory's congressional delegate said Tuesday. Congress and President Bush are expected to sign off on the closure by the end of next week, said Anibal Acevado Vila, the U.S. territory's nonvoting congressional delegate. The Pentagon did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. The base's closure comes after several years of protests against U.S. military exercises in Vieques, which ended with the Navy's May 1 withdrawal from its bombing...

Washington is planning to cut and downgrade its network of military bases in Germany and to transfer some its European military assets to the new pro-American Nato allies of eastern Europe, according to diplomats and officials on both sides of the Atlantic. Although no final decision has been taken, the plan to scale down the military presence in Germany, the mainstay of US forces in Europe since the second world war, marks a major strategic shift which is being welcomed by the insecure post-communist countries of central Europe. While such a decision is seen as too important to have been...