"Rear Adm. Gene La Rocque, a decorated Navy veteran who spoke out against the wastes of war, was labeled a traitor by some and went on to found the Center for Defense Information, a private think tank that was described as both pro-peace and pro-military, died on Monday in Washington. He was 98. His death was confirmed by his son John. Admiral La Rocque attracted particular attention when he gave an interview to Studs Terkel for his 1984 book, “The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two.” “I hate it when they say, ‘He gave his life for his country,’ ” Admiral La Rocque told Mr. Terkel. “Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. “They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.” In the same conversation, Admiral La Rocque described the State Department as having become “the lackey of the Pentagon” and lamented the loss of civilian control. After retiring from the Navy in the early 1970s, he founded the Center for Defense Information with Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll (who died in 2003). The new organization, positioned as an informed second opinion to the Pentagon, began with three primary goals: to avert a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, to end the Vietnam War and to monitor the influence of the military-industrial complex. As the center’s director, Admiral La Rocque continued his battle long after the first two goals had been achieved. In 1990 he was calling for the nation’s military budget to be reduced by one-third, to $200 billion, and troop strength to be reduced from three million to two million. And he was working to take the profit out of weapons manufacture, although he doubted that the military would ever produce its own weapons again. Lawrence J. Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, met Admiral La Rocque when Mr. Korb was asked to brief him for a debate in 1972. Admiral La Rocque and his new organization “understood what the issues were,” Mr. Korb, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, said in an interview Friday. “You need this submarine, and not this one. He presented reasonable alternatives that people would consider.” “This was a career military officer, which made him stand out,” Mr. Korb added. Eugene Robert La Rocque was born on June 29, 1918, in Kankakee, Ill., the third of five children of Edward La Rocque, who ran and lived above a furniture store during the Depression, and the former Lucille Eddy. One of Gene’s first jobs, at the age of 12 or so, was delivering newspapers. But he was fired, his daughter, Annette La Rocque Fitzsimmons, said on Friday, when the publisher, a Republican, learned that the boy’s father was a local Democratic committeeman. As Admiral La Rocque recounted the story, that day his mother told him he could marry anyone he liked when he grew up, as long as she wasn’t a Republican. Gene enlisted in the Navy in 1940. “In the summer of ’41, I asked to be sent to Pearl Harbor,” he told Mr. Terkel. “The Pacific fleet was there, and it sounded romantic.” The request was granted, and the young sailor escaped harm in the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. He and the rest of the crew of the destroyer Macdonough were sent in pursuit of the Japanese fleet." http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/05/us/gene-la-rocque-decorated-veteran-who-condemned-waste-of-war-dies-at-98.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0&referer=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F
