Following the Dec. 2 New York Times story on a Nov. 6 memo sent by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to President Bush that suggested it was time to change the Administration approach to the war in Iraq, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the President plans to “make some changes.” Hadley called Rumsfeld’s memo, sent two days before he announced his resignation, a helpful “laundry list” of proposals that will be considered along with those from the Iraq Study Group, due out this week. Among Rumsfeld’s options was to accelerate a drawdown of US facilities in Iraq, position a stronger US force along the borders with Iraq and Syria, and provide US forces for security only to those provinces or cities that ask for US help.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…