Military Leaders

One year ago, a group studying military ethics at the Naval Academy began thinking that corporate executives and military leaders - both painfully aware of how ethical lapses can harm an institution - could learn something from each other. The result was a meeting of the minds yesterday that included speeches by U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes; retired Adm. James D. Watkins, a former U.S. energy secretary; Ronald D. Sugar, chief executive officer of Northrop Grumman; and ethics expert Amitai Etzioni.

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials said yesterday that the man who appeared on Iraqi television shortly after a blistering U.S. attack on a Baghdad compound was most likely Saddam Hussein. Still, some officials cautioned that it was not certain that he had survived the strike, which targeted senior Iraqi leaders, including Hussein. They held out the possibility that the video might have been produced before the airstrike. Though Hussein mentioned yesterday's date in his appearance, he might have prepared some videos in advance, officials said.

WASHINGTON - They were crucial to the defeat of the Taliban government, calling in precision airstrikes while huddled in the hills with Afghan allies. And these shadowy warriors are playing an increasingly larger role in the overall war on terror, training foreign troops from the gorges of Georgia to the steamy jungles of the Philippines. Now, military leaders are looking at these special operations forces - from the Army's Green Berets to the Navy's SEALs - with heightened interest, proposing to increase their numbers, provide new equipment and set up more training missions with rank-and-file troops.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - For five days now, military leaders of the Northern Alliance have watched American air assaults against the Taliban's front-line troops guarding Kabul, and the military leaders have formed a strong opinion of what they've seen. They think they're a joke. Once again yesterday, U.S. warplanes arrived in late afternoon to attack Taliban positions south of here. The jets circled over the rich Shomali Plain, dropped bombs amid the pounding of anti-aircraft guns and roared away, their swept-back wings reflecting the gold of the sunset.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - As U.S. forces began a new phase in the war in Afghanistan, the Pakistani government reported yesterday parallel political maneuvering to replace the Taliban regime. The government confirmed that it held talks with Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, a top Afghan military commander supportive of the Taliban. Haqqani, a hero of the resistance against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, could command the loyalty of Pashtun tribes who back the Taliban. Streets were calm in the aftermath of the U.S. commando raid in Afghanistan, although anti-war demonstrations, common in recent weeks, were planned for today in the Islamabad suburb of Rawilpindi.

WASHINGTON -- In the months since Gen. Pervez Musharraf overthrew Pakistan's elected government, the United States has moved from expressions of "deep regret" at the coup to increasing tolerance and heightened hopes for the new ruler of the world's newest nuclear state. Musharraf is coming to be seen as a relative moderate who could steer Pakistan away from Islamic extremism and who has taken promising steps toward economic reform. "Coups are regrettable, but this one is less regrettable than others," said Stephen Cohen, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former State Department official.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- President Clinton said yesterday that he agreed with his wife that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy in dealing with homosexuals had been a failure, and he accused military leaders of not enforcing it properly."

SANTIAGO, Chile -- The arrest of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in London a year ago has opened a quiet and long-postponed reckoning in Chile over its years of dictatorship that is finally bringing former military officers to task for the deaths or disappearances of thousands of political opponents. Since the arrest of Pinochet, the former dictator, 25 officers have been arrested on charges of murder, torture and kidnapping, including a member of one of the juntas that helped rule the country for 17 years after 1973.

At a manic moment in his 1968 campaign for the presidency, George Wallace called a news conference to introduce Gen. Curtis LeMay, the cigar-chomping former commander of the Strategic Air Command, as his vice presidential running mate.Seven minutes later, about the time needed for a high-alert scramble at SAC headquarters, the Wallace campaign was a disaster-in-progress and LeMay was trying to assure the American people that he was not "a drooling idiot whose only solution to any problem is to drop atomic bombs all over the world."

WASHINGTON -- Reflecting growing concern over recent reductions in defense spending, the United States' top military leaders have warned that the Pentagon must boost its budget for weapons modernization sooner than planned or risk eroding military preparedness.In a memo to Defense Secretary William J. Perry, the military service chiefs recommend increasing the modernization budget to $60 billion a year by fiscal 1998, rather than fiscal 2000, as currently anticipated. The budget currently stands at $39 billion.