Duty, Honor, Country

West Point Graduates Train For A Non-Traditional War On Terror

(CBS)  Duty, honor, country: The defining principle of West Point since it was founded more than 200 ago.

Its purpose is to produce a corps of professional officers. In those two centuries, the art of warfare has seen revolutionary change, from cavalry charges to cruise missiles.

Military establishments, historically, have been accused of always preparing for the last war, and West Point is no exception. But if West Point has been slow to change, it has also been quick to learn from its lapses. Correspondent Morley Safer reports.

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Ever since 9/11, the academy has been racing to come to terms with a new kind of war -- how to educate officers to face the uncertainty, the unpredictability, the chaos of an Iraq.

On the face of it, nothing appears to have changed. West Point is still the most demanding combination of physical and academic rigor in the country. But the cadets to graduate this year were freshmen plebes on Sept. 11, 2001, and only weeks into their education.

For them, and for West Point, everything changed on that day. They were still subject to the academy’s oldest codes and disciplines: duty, honor, country -- and for the body, agony.

Twice-a-year tests, 42 push-ups, and 53 sit-ups in two minutes -- a two-mile run in under 16 minutes. Fail to meet the standard, and you’re out. The school day is still completely regimented, from reveille at dawn, to formation before meals and speed eating for 4,000, all over in 18 minutes.

And on top of the course work is the military stuff, like the Sandhurst competition, an annual 8-mile obstacle course from hell, all designed to instill leadership. 60 Minutes talked to three about-to-be leaders: David Veney, Ray Ramos and Danielle Weaver.

"Where do you all expect to be a year from now?" asks Safer. "Iraq, do you think?"

"Good chance," says Ramos.

"What do you expect your mission will be?" asks Safer.

"Support the commander and chief," says Weaver. "I'm going to be an intelligence officer, so that will require me to collect as much intelligence to support my unit, which will be the 10th Mountain Division."

"Does the likely prospect of being in a serious combat zone, where there are no fronts, as in a traditional war, does that give you pause?" asks Safer.

"You definitely stop and look back and question whether or not you worked as hard as you should have to learn everything you need to," says Veney. "And you study that extra bit to make sure you're ready for that situation. But all you can really do is learn as much as possible. And prepare yourself for it."

And that’s exactly what West Point is trying to do, as fast and as well as it can. The academy is trying to prepare cadets for a kind of war that neither the political nor military establishments anticipated, using technology for a generation raised on virtual reality.

Back in the dorm rooms, cadets exchange email with former upper classmen in Iraq, just back from patrol. It's real-time battle experience, transmitted in seconds, lessons that may be as valuable as anything learned in class. And in the classroom, it’s back to the future.

"We also added obviously some courses to the curriculum. Counter insurgency, we actually we put that one back. That was a course when I was a cadet in the Vietnam era," says Brig. Gen. Dan Kaufman, the dean of West Point. He says that after the end of the Vietnam War, counterinsurgency had become passé.

"It had come out of the curriculum. It had, yeah, until frankly, 9/11," says Kaufman.

Now it’s taught by a specialist, a special forces major who fought in Afghanistan.