BattlelandNational Security
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbIKRZVS8Wc]
Showing that the boys-will-be-boys Navy is a thing of the past – once again – the service said late Thursday that it will punish 40 officers and senior enlisted sailors for helping produce a series of crude sexually-laced videos shown to the crew of the aircraft carrier USS …
BattlelandNational Security
Never one to begrudge a good wage for military personnel, it is, however, worth noting that these bonuses average nearly $57,000 per sailor. It ain’t like hitting the lottery, but it ain’t peanuts, either. Especially because the bonuses are tax-free, given that the sailors re-upped while in a combat zone battling the Taliban and al Qaeda fleets.
BattlelandNational Security
Given the amazing medical facilities the U.S. military has in Afghanistan and Iraq, medical evacuations of U.S. troops from those countries are reserved for only the most seriously wounded or sick. Between 2001 and last October 1, some 2 million Americans served in the war zones; 62,087 of them had to be evacuated for medical care. …
BattlelandNational Security
There’s a game of chicken now under way in Congress — and the Pentagon is caught in the middle. House Republicans, eager to show they’re serious about cutting spending, are talking about a series of so-called “continuing resolutions” that will basically freeze government funding at 2010 levels unless Senate Democrats agree to deeper …
BattlelandNational Security
Even as documents believed to be leaked by Army PFC Bradley Manning are helping trigger revolutions now sweeping North Africa and the Persian Gulf, the U.S. government late Wednesday levied charges against the 23-year old that could sentence him to death.
The key charge involves an alleged violation of Article 104 of the Uniform Code …
BattlelandNational Security
The Nashua Telegraph reports on an interesting New Hampshire wedding last weekend between a soldier wounded in Afghanistan and his bride. Last August, Stanley Medai was a gunner on a Humvee as it rumbled through Paktia Province south of Kabul. It was third in a four-vehicle convoy, headed out on a routine mission, when an IED …
BattlelandNational Security
The Pentagon has told Congress that “due to increased screening referrals and help-seeking in the face of sustained operations,” the number of mental-health professionals working for the military jumped from 43,716 in 2007 to 55,868 in 2009 — a 28 percent increase.
Among those working full time for the military, the total mushroomed …
BattlelandNational Security
While the Navy has banned smoking on submarines, it can’t do that aboard surface ships, where most of its sailors go to sea. That’s because, according to this fascinating article in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the tobacco industry convinced Congress to mandate the availability of the cancer sticks aboard …
BattlelandNational Security
Much of the billions of dollars U.S. taxpayers are spending rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq is likely being wasted because no one is ensuring the contractors involved are doing a good job. That’s the bottom line in Monday’s report from the congressionally-mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 90 …
BattlelandNational Security
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBY-0n4esNY]
In the olden days, like maybe 10 years ago, dissidents in a particular country could only broadcast their disdain for their leaders and plot their ouster through underground cells, clandestinely-posted posters, crude samizdat publications and graffiti. It was tough to reach hundreds …
BattlelandNational Security
The debate over imposing a so-called “no-fly zone” over Libya to make sure Muammar Gaddafi’s air force can’t strafe his subjects from the skies is now in full swing. From the outside, it seems like a perfect answer: using a dram of airpower to protect helpless innocents on the ground. Of course, it’s never that simple.
The New York …
BattlelandNational Security
As an unprecedented sirocco sweeps across North Africa and the Middle East, something amazing is happening: al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden are being left behind in the dust. Neither Islamic fundamentalism nor hatred of Israel or the United States is generating this force. Young people, linked as never before by technology that didn’t …
BattlelandNational Security
There used to be a newsletter for American veterans of World War I. When I first saw it some two decades or more ago, it noted there were some 4,000 of them still alive. I haven’t seen it in many years — I don’t recall its name, but it might have been The Torch. Amazing that any were still alive, given that their war began in this …
