It seems the General Accounting Office has been busy of late; in a report completed in May that surfaced yesterday at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the congressional auditors found little evidence to support the Bush administration’s claims that environmental regulations are interfering with military training. The administration has asked Congress to exempt the military from some major environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but the GAO rejected the assertion that environmental “encroachment” on military bases had hampered training efforts. In response to the report, Gen. John Keane, Army second-in-command, said, “It is true we have not documented any environmental degradation [of the military’s ability to train], but we all know it’s true.”
