Jim Saxton: “This amendment will repeal the statutory requirement that an officer in our Armed Forces, in order to be selected for…”

“This amendment will repeal the statutory requirement that an officer in our Armed Forces, in order to be selected for assignment as the Defense Attache to France, must hold the rank of brigadier general, or, in the case of a Navy officer, rear admiral lower half. The Department of Defense included the repeal of this requirement as part of their budget request for fiscal year 2004, and there is no justification for continuing this statutory mandate, in my opinion. The adoption of this amendment will not prevent our military attache in Paris from being a brigadier general or a rear admiral; rather, it will only remove the requirement that they be of that rank. It will permit the Department of Defense greater flexibility in making their decisions to assign officers to that position. Most importantly, adoption of this amendment will end the unnecessary requirement that our military attache to France be of a higher rank than our military attaches everywhere else in the world. The United States has 135 defense attache positions in our embassies around the world. Of those 135, only three, those of France, Russia, and China, are officers that hold the rank of brigadier general or rear admiral. Our attache to France is the only military attache whose rank is mandated by law in title 10. Accordingly, France is the exception to the rule.”