I'm nearing the end of mine, and exactly half a century ago, in June of 1942 ... we were at war, and I was graduating from school.

The speaker that day at Andover was the then-secretary of war, Henry Stimson, and his message was one of public service, but with a twist on the importance of finishing one's schooling before going off to fight for one's country.

I listened closely to what he had to say, but I didn't take his advice, and that day was my 18th birthday, and when the commencement ceremony ended, I went on into Boston, enlisted in the Navy as a seaman 2nd class, and I never regretted it.

And you, too, have signed up, and you, too, will never regret it, and I salute you for it. Fortunately, because of the sacrifices made in years before and still being made, you should be able to complete this phase of your education.

A half century's passed since 1 left school to go into the service. A half century has passed since that day when Stimson spoke of the challenge of creating a new world, and

you will also be entering a new world, one far better than the one came to know — a world with the potential to be far better yet.

And this is the challenge, and this is the opportunity of your lifetimes. I envy you for it, and I wish you Godspeed, and while I'm at it, as your commander in chief, I hereby grant amnesty to the Corps of Cadets. Thank you all very much. ...

scourge of drugs, to break down the barriers of racial discrimination, to offer equal opportunity to women.

This is not just a result of selfselection. It also reflects the military's commitment to education and training. You know, people speak of defense conversion, the process by which defense, the defense firms, retool for civilian tasks. Well, defense conversion within the military has been going on for years. It is the constant process of training and retraining which the military does so well that allows individuals to keep up with the latest technology, take on more challenging assignments and prepare for life on the outside.

Out of this culture of merit and competition have emerged hundreds of thousands of highly skilled men and women brimming with real self-confidence. What they possess is a special mix of discipline, a willingness to accept direction and the confidence, a willingness to accept responsibility. Together, discipline and confidence provide the basis for winning, for getting the job done.

one that you here today have made. To join the armed forces is to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for your country and for your fellow man.

What you have done, what you are doing, sends an important message, one that I fear sometimes gets lost amidst today's often materialist self-interested culture. It is important to remember, it's important to demonstrate, that there is a higher purpose to life beyond one's self. I speak of family, of community, of ideals. I speak of duty, honor, country.

There are many forms of contributing to this country, of public service. Yes, there's government, there is volunteerism. I love to talk about the thousand points of light, one American helping another.

The daily tasks that require doing in our classrooms, in our hospitals, in our cities, our farms

all can and do represent a form of service.

And in whatever form, service benefits our society, and it ennobles the giver. It is a cherished American concept, one we should continue to practice and pass on to our children.

This was what I wanted to share on this occasion. You are beginning your service to country and

Selfless Service

There is no higher calling, no more honorable choice, than the

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And you

and the commander in chief can always count on us for faithful support and execution of your decisions.

Mr. Secretary, the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen standing before you in this hall represent the American men and women serving in uniform all over the globe — men and women who are standing guard over our principles, for our friends and for our very way of life. On their behalf, I congratulate you, sir, and welcome you to this new chapter in your outstanding career of service to our nation. Welcome, Mr. Secretary. O

Aspin:

Thank you all very, very much, members of my family, friends from Wisconsin, friends from Washington and elsewhere, men and women of the armed services. Thank you all very much for joining me here today. I'm deeply honored to take this oath as the secretary of defense.

Gen. Powell, thank you very much for those kind remarks, and thank you for being my host on behalf of our servicemen and women.

I want to say a couple of things here today to my old friends, my family and supporters who have been with me for the last 20 years representing the First District of Wisconsin. The first thing is, thank you very, very much for your support, your help, your friendship. They have been invaluable.

The second thing is, don't think your job is over; I'm going to need your help, your support and your friendship even more ... now. We are still all in this together, and the task we face is a tough one. This new world order is long on the new world and a little short on the order.

And I want to acknowledge my new friends and associates, the civilians and the service members who work in the Pentagon. At the heart of my plans is the notion that we must all work together as a fully

integrated and cooperative team to get the results that we need to deal with this new world.

I think the challenges we will face together fall basically into two categories. One category concerns the top-priority things the Defense Department has to do at home. Essentially that means maintaining the superb quality of the forces and the high-technology advantages we have in our systems as we face the inevitable drawdown of these forces.

The second category of challenges concerns the dealing with the dangers we face in this fast-changing post-Cold War, post-Soviet world.

And I talk about these as I look behind me, and see my colleagues and friends from the House of Representatives and the times that we have worked together and the way we have come together, grappling basically with these issues and beginning to come together to grapple with these issues.

First, at home. The men and women in today's armed forces are the finest that have ever served in this country. The president has made clear, time and again, that we must maintain this quality as we go about this inevitable reduction in the forces. The members of our armed forces represent a national resource that must be maintained.

On high technology, during the Cold War we faced an opponent who relentlessly fielded new systems in larger and larger numbers. We responded by producing our own new generations of systems with emphasis on technological superiority. We reasoned that if we could not outbuild them, we could compensate, perhaps more than compensate, by maintaining a technological advantage.

With the end of the Cold War, the need to continuously field new generations of systems is now out of the question, but high technology has only proved to be more valuable, as we saw in the war with Iraq. Hightechnology precision weapons and

other systems reduced U.S. casualties, brought a more rapid end to the war and reduced civilian casualties through such developments as reduced collateral damage, and that is what put it all together for us.

The high-technology systems were at the heart of that successful enterprise. The difficulty that looms before us today is how to maintain their technological edge into the future decades and when we have to have this technological edge and how do we maintain the industrial base to produce these systems without the high production levels of the old Cold War budgets.

Together we need to answer that question. The second whole category of challenges is just as formidable as this first. It concerns how do we respond to the outside world with our Cold War adversary gone? What kind of a defense do we now need?

We know for certain that the end of the Cold War does not mean the end of defense. The war with Iraq made that only too clear. But the end of the Cold War does mean the end of our old way of looking at defense needs.

Four dangers have emerged that concern us today. The first is the new nuclear danger. Instead of thousands of nuclear warheads from the Soviet Union, the new nuclear danger stems from a handful of warheads in the hands of terrorists or terrorist states.

The leaders of the old Soviet Union were thugs who did preside over an evil empire, but at least they weren't crazy. If nuclear weapons continue to spread, we won't always be so sure about the owners of nuclear weapons in the future.

After the nuclear danger, the second danger we face is from regional conflicts. These dangers do not put the existence of the United States at risk. Only a power like the former Soviet Union could pose such a risk. But rather, the threats posed here are potentially threats to the United States' vital interests. Saddam Hussein threatened vital interests when he appeared to be headed for control of much of the world's oil through the tactics of brutal invasion.

The third danger out of the four arises from the possibility of the failure of reform, particularly in the