McCain Favors a Military Overhaul Instead of Hike in Defense Spending

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain took issue with rival George W. Bush on Friday, rejecting the Texas governor’s plan to boost military spending and insisting that the military’s priority should be to restructure for the post-Cold War era.

“I believe that Gov. Bush’s speech left out an important part of the equation,” said McCain (R-Ariz.), who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “That is that we have to restructure the military. We have to close bases. We have to contract out maintenance and other repair work to civilian contractors to save money, and we’ve got to stop the pork-barrel spending.”

McCain said he has long supported better pay for military personnel, as Bush proposed Thursday in a speech on military policy at The Citadel, a South Carolina military college. But, McCain added, “we don’t have to spend a lot more money.”

His comments illustrate a likely flash point between McCain, the former Vietnam fighter pilot and prisoner of war who claims the top foreign policy credentials among the GOP candidates, and Bush, the Republican front-runner who has little experience on such matters.

McCain, who signed copies of his new book, “Faith of My Fathers,” at a downtown Boston bookstore, said the military restructuring requires a president “willing to break a lot of china” and battle Pentagon interests vested in the status quo. He cited one example from the Kosovo conflict as a “classic example” of the nation’s military problems.

“It took two months to get 24 Apache helicopters from Germany to Albania; they trained, crashed two and never used them in combat,” McCain said. “That is an apt metaphor for the severe problems that the military has.”