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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 25, 2003

Bush signs $401 billion defense bill

US President Bush signed a $401.3 billion defense authorization bill Monday and said, "America's military is standing between our country and grave danger."


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US President Bush signed a $401.3 billion defense authorization bill Monday and said, "America's military is standing between our country and grave danger."

At the bill-signing ceremony at the Pentagon earlier in the day, Bush said U.S. forces are facing "a great and historic task" to confront and defeat terrorists.

The U.S. military toll rose Sunday when two U.S. soldiers were killed, then pummeled with concrete blocks, and a soldier traveling in a convoy was killed by a roadside bomb. In Afghanistan, five soldiers were killed Sunday in the crash of a transport helicopter near the main U.S. base.

U.S. policies in Iraq are a major political vulnerability for Bush in the 2004 election season.

After months in which more than half of Americans approved of the president's handling of Iraq, a recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll showed disapproval at 54% and approval at 45%. Other polls find the public evenly divided on that question.

Public approval of Bush's handling of the economy, meanwhile, has increased recently with positive news on that front.

Among other things, the defense bill before him at the Pentagon:

* Raises salaries for soldiers by an average of 4.15%, and extends increases in combat and family separation pay.

* Calls for the Air Force to lease 20 Boeing 767 planes as in-flight refueling tankers and buy 80 more.

* Partially overturns rules preventing disabled veterans from receiving some retirement pay as well as disability compensation.

* Grants Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld increased control over 700,000 civilian employees. Pentagon officials said restrictions on hiring, firing and promoting employees forced them to use military personnel for jobs better suited for civilians. Democrats said the bill goes too far in stripping overtime guarantees and job protection rules.

* Lifts a decade-old ban on research into low-yield nuclear weapons and authorizes $15 million for continued research into a powerful nuclear weapon capable of destroying deep underground bunkers.

* Exempts the military to provisions of the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The Pentagon claimed environmental laws restrict training exercises; environmentalists said the laws have had little effect on training and that the exemptions go too far.

Source: Agencies




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