News brief: Rumsfeld Seeks Cut in Military.
Hampered by an increasingly combative relationship with Congress, the Pentagon is expected to seek savings from its payroll rather than making deep cuts in major weapons programs in its next long-range plan.
The lead of this story immediately distracts the reader from reality. The combative relationship with Congress is not with the military. The public almost entirely reads "Pentagon" and hears "US Armed Forces". This is an example of the civilian leadership (civilian elites in the executive branch) of the military having a combative relationship with the civilian elites in the legislative branch. There are reasons why the uniformed military has its own lobbyists on Capitol Hill to lobby for restoring budgets the Pentagon civilians (and politicized military… three star and above?) have cut.
