Taylor made the statement Friday following the Base Realignment and Closure regional hearings.

Taylor and Ret. Lt. Gen. Clark Griffith unleashed a three-pronged attack on the commission's data related to the installation it wants to turn into a super clinic with ambulatory services.

They attacked the math used to make the recommendations, which Griffith said was fraught with errors. The logic behind the feasibility of farming out the graduate medical training was also isolated as a weak spot by Griffith and Taylor.

Griffith said the civilian hospitals could not absorb the patient load created by the closing of Keesler, nor could they provide the amount of specialties available to the hospital's 56,000 beneficiaries.

"The Air Force obviously hopes to dump its medical responsibilities onto Tricare, the VA, Medicare and the local community without regard for the consequences," Taylor said.

Taylor's newfound optimism sprang when one of his staffers, Brian Martin, found a mistake in the BRAC data. The mistake moved the installation to the threshold for bases to be removed from the list.

Griffith, who gave the 30-minute presentation on Keesler, said the mistake found by Martin was one of many made during the process.

Griffith said the Medical Joint Cross Service Group's data made a $10 million mistake on the annual savings calculation, which brought down the annual savings from $30 million to $20 million. The General Accounting Office as well as the cross service group also confirmed the mistake, he said.

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