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The general brought in to command Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the wake of a scandal over conditions at the hospital was nominated by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday as the new surgeon general of the Army. Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker came to Walter Reed in March to replace Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman following disclosures of poor living conditions and bureaucratic nightmares experienced by some patients recovering from wounds suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. To replace Schoomaker at Walter Reed, the Army yesterday named Maj. Gen. Carla G. Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of Tripler Army Medical Center...

Farewell Message, Army Chief of Staff General Peter J. Schoomaker 35th Chief of Staff of the Army Tomorrow we will stand on the parade field at Fort Myer and the mantle of Army Chief of Staff will pass to General George W. Casey. It has been a tremendous privilege and honor to serve alongside you, the Soldiers, Civilians, and family members, who make the Army the world’s preeminent land force, the ultimate instrument of national resolve. Upon becoming 35th Army Chief of Staff in August 2003, I issued an “Arrival Message” to the force. In that message I spoke of...

 The Army’s Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, has recently done something extraordinary within the realm of Beltway politics – he told the truth about our Army’s readiness. His message before the House Committee on the Armed Services was simple and disturbing: Five years after 9-11 and the US Army, the service that bears the largest burden in this conflict, is still struggling to build a force capable of conducting a long -term global war within established budget constraints.  This grim assessment may be hard for some to accept, but we need to know the unvarnished truth if we are to be...

The L.A. Times has gone into despair over a 10 second pause in a recent press conference held by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, Army chief of staff. In an article titled "Is U.S. Winning? Army Chief Is at a Loss", by Peter Spiegel, published on July 15th, the L.A. Times moaned that we surely must be losing the war because General Schoomaker paused for "10 seconds" after being asked if we are winning. It seemed like a routine question, one that military leaders involved in prosecuting the war in Iraq must ask themselves with some regularity: Is the U.S. winning?...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker on Wednesday criticized retired generals who have come out against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other defense leaders, calling their comments “unfortunate” and “inappropriate.” “I was retired, and you didn’t see me doing it,” Schoomaker told reporters during a Washington press breakfast. “If I thought what these officers were saying was true, I would not be here.” Schoomaker suggested that if the generals were so unhappy with their civilian masters, they should have left their jobs in protest. “I think we have a responsibility, while we’re in uniform, if we...

WASHINGTON - Everyone is saying that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s days are numbered, thanks in part to increasing calls by some former generals for Rumsfeld’s resignation. But Rumsfeld was hired by George W. Bush to do precisely what he has done to the consternation of the generals who are now coming out to complain about him. When President Bush brought Rumsfeld back to the Pentagon, the president told him to shake up the Pentagon, to transform it from the Cold War structure and culture that it was stuck in to a new force with strategies that could respond to...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 17, 2006) – The chief of staff of the Army said he expects to see developments with base realignment and closures, an increase in modular brigades and operational force strength, and 20,000 jobs converted from the military to civilian workforce in 2006. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker gave an overview of the direction the Army is going for the next year at the annual Institute for Land Warfare Forum Breakfast in Arlington, Va., Jan. 12. “This year is going to be the busiest year we’ve ever had,” said Schoomaker about the Army as a whole, but...

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with GSN on August 23, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, the military intelligence operative who collaborated with Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) to draw worldwide attention to the Able Danger intelligence unit, described Able Danger’s origins, explained how it tracked terrorists as they visited individual mosques around the world, discussed the CIA’s refusal to cooperate with the program, acknowledged the supporting technical role played by the Raytheon Company, and described Able Danger’s ultimate demise.

ARLINGTON, Va. — The long war in Iraq may be testing the all-volunteer Army, but the service is “a long way from being what anybody would call dire straits,” Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, said Thursday. “We’re a heck of a long way from breaking the Army,” Schoomaker told reporters at a press roundtable in Washington. “I was in the Army in the late ’60s and ’70s … and I remember what a dispirited Army looks like.” Despite problems in making recruiting goals earlier this spring, the active Army made its numbers in June and July, and...

In truth, Schoomaker was preaching to the choir. A lot of the audience was made up of military personnel in uniform, one or two in Marine dress blues. The civilians seemed to be mostly retired military, many of them former officers. They sang the national anthem before Schoomaker spoke, and their questions afterward were all friendly. Audience members smiled at the general and at a reception later asked to pose for pictures with him.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker strongly defended the inclusion of female "warriors" in the armed forces - and the growing number of female casualties.

...Even during ongoing military campaigns, Mr. Rumsfeld never wavered from his transformational objectives.... Mr. Rumsfeld, with the brilliant leadership of General Schoomaker, was able to move personnel from noncombat to combat units, enabling them with additional reorganization to create 15 newly restructured combat brigades. Also, because of Mr. Rumsfeld's successful plan, our military is more flexible, more agile and better able to fight unconventional enemies. A new civilian personnel system was designed to reward merit, reduce force stress and replace a bureaucratic culture of risk aversion with one of innovation. Moreover, he was able to move military personnel out of...

<p>Gen. Peter Schoomaker, chief of the staff of the Army for nine months, met April 6 at the Pentagon with reporters and editors from Army Times Publishing Company. Here is a transcript of that 90-minute interview. The contents have been edited for clarity.</p>

ISLAMABAD: General Peter Schoomaker, Chief of Staff US Army, called on President General Pervez Musharraf here on Tuesday. The President recalled the excellent ties that existed between the armed forces of Pakistan and the United States. President Pervez Musharraf wished General Schoomaker a pleasant and professionally rewarding stay in the country. He expressed hope that the US army chief's visit would help further strengthen the common position and views on the prevailing international and regional geo-strategic situation. General Schoomaker thanked the president and the Pakistan Army for exalted hospitality being extended to him and members of the delegation. He termed...

New Army Brigade Plan is Dangerous Following his unprecedented and premature retirement of 47 U.S. Army generals and with his installation of hand-picked replacements to lead the U.S. Army nearly completed, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is on the verge of moving full bore to begin implementing long-planned reforms, including the complete elimination of the Army's division-based force structure. Rumsfeld and his hand-picked replacement as Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, plan to replace it with a force structure based on dismounted infantry-centric mini-brigade units consisting of about 1,800 men - each of which will be more optimized to...

The Army cannot continue operating at its current frantic pace, Chief of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker warned senators today. “We must relieve stress on the force,” he told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. Reorganizing and rebalancing the force will help ease the strain, as will the addition of 30,000 troops over the next few years, he said. But the real key to relieving the stress generated by the war on terrorism and homeland security needs is creating a new modular Army, he told lawmakers. In the modular force, the current number of Regular Army brigades would be expanded from...

The Army shoots down its helicopter. IT'S AN AXIOM IN WASHINGTON that government programs never die, and they don't fade away either. Instead, they invent new rationales to perpetuate their existence ad infinitum. So it was rather stunning when, last Monday, the Army announced the cancellation of its prized $39 billion Comanche armed reconnaissance helicopter program. Credit the dramatic about-face to the Army's new chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker. The former head of the U.S. Special Operations Command was brought out of retirement last August by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to shake up an Army many observers think...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, invoking emergency powers, has authorized the Army to grow temporarily by 30,000 troops above its congressionally approved limit of 482,000 to facilitate a restructuring of forces severely strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and counterterrorism missions elsewhere. The increase, disclosed yesterday in congressional testimony by Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, surprised members of the House Armed Services Committee, many of whom have been pressing for a larger Army. Rumsfeld has resisted a permanent increase for months, arguing that a number of efficiency measures and restructuring moves could alleviate some of the...

By Vicki Allen WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Strained by operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), the U.S. Army will boost its forces by 30,000 through emergency authority it expects to last four years, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker told Congress on Wednesday. But Schoomaker, testifying to the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, rejected calls from lawmakers for a permanent increase in forces, saying it would undermine efforts to streamline and modernize the Army. "Right now, I've been given the authority by the secretary of defense to grow the Army by 30,000...

The Army chief of staff "adamantly opposes" an end- strength increase to the size of his service. Gen. Peter Schoomaker told the House Armed Services Committee today that an unfunded end-strength increase "puts readiness at risk, it puts training at risk, it puts modernization at risk, it puts transformation at risk – and that's why I'm resisting it." Many in Congress believe the Army is stressed with worldwide operations. One proposal calls for adding two more combat divisions. Another calls for a 40,000-man increase in the Army, while other, more general proposals just call for end-strength increases. Schoomaker agrees the...