base lands, the US itself is about to go through another round of base closings. The following are excerpts from a recent column by Associated Press Washington columnist Walter Mears: Touching the bases stirs political anxiety and trauma, so Congress decided a decade ago to have somebody else decide which military installations should be shut down. Until then, it wasn't happening.

Commissions were created to determine what bases should be closed, their findings subject to all-or-nothing approval by the White House and then by Congress.

That was supposed to immunise the process against political pressure. It did to a point, ending the impasse in which House members and senators whose home installations were threatened prevented any closings at all.

But it involves too many jobs, too great an economic impact to be politically untouchable. Closed bases equal a campaign issue in House and Senate elections. The impact can extend into presidential politics, a sore spot among Republicans now.

The Pentagon wants the commission system revived for two new rounds of base closings, beginning in 1999, which would require congressional approval of a new commission this year.

Defense Secretary William Cohen said it comes down to a choice. Cut bases, he said, or there won't be enough money to modernise US military forces.

"If you figure that politically it is unacceptable, economically it hasn't worked out just yet, that we have got to defer till some time in the future -- well, that's the choice you have to make,'' he told the House National Security Committee on Wednesday. "But do so with the understanding that it also inhibits the military from then doing the things that we need to do.'' Cohen has seen both sides of the issue. As a Republican senator and House member, he tried unsuccessfully to prevent the shutdown of an Air Force base in Maine.

But he said the numbers are compelling: US forces are down 33 percent, going to 36 percent, from Cold War levels, while bases have been cut about 21 percent. "We're carrying extra weight,'' Cohen said.

Before the creation of the commission system of up-or-down votes with no amendments allowed once the closing list is delivered, no major bases had been closed for 11 years.

The process has been used four times since 1988, affecting 243 bases, with eventual savings estimated at $5 billion a year, although closings cost money at first.

Part of the argument about new base closings involves the way President Clinton dealt with the last one. He accepted it grudgingly in 1995, while delaying the closing of bases in California and Texas, and transferring jobs there from military to private employers.

Republicans contended that was a political manoeuvre aimed at the 1996 presidential campaign. Clinton angrily denied it, saying he had acted to spare areas that otherwise would have suffered unfairly.

That echoes the congressional arguments used in blocking base closings before the choices were turned over to appointed commissioners who don't have to deal with the voters back home. For Congress, it is a sort of political safety net, since there's always the commission to blame.