BattlelandNational Security
If it’s Friday, it’s time for another dispatch from the high court on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Last Friday, a pro-gay Republican group seeking to overturn the ban on gay men and women serving openly in the U.S. military asked the Supreme Court to bar enforcement of the 17-year old law while the Justice Department appeals a federal …
BattlelandNational Security
At 0420 local time, two long bursts of RPD machine gun fire echoed through the valley at Wanat. Immediately after this signal, insurgents opened up with intense and continuous volleys of machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire from hidden locations on all sides of the American/ANA position. This initial volley started an
…
BattlelandNational Security
Tough story in the Clarksville, Tenn., Leaf-Chronicle this morning about a soldier with PTSD who says he went AWOL, instead of returning to Afghanistan, because of the lack of mental-health services at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. “All I wanted was to be treated,” Specialist Jeff Hanks, who also served in Iraq in 2008, said outside the …
BattlelandNational Security
Here’s a Washington item from the dead-tree issue of Time just out where I survey the rockier road ahead for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and a couple of other national-security matters, in the mid-term’s wake…
BattlelandNational Security
The Washington Post reports this morning that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and letting openly gay men and women serve in uniform would have minimal impact on the nation’s fighting forces, according to a Pentagon group investigating the matter.
BattlelandNational Security
Thank you.
BattlelandNational Security
The Army has just released its internal investigation into the Fort Hood shootings a year ago that left 13 people dead at the hands, according to eye-witnesses, of Maj. Nidal Hasan. He’s the Army psychiatrist and Muslim who shouted — according to some of those witnesses — “Allah Akbar” (“God is great”) as he methodically killed 12 …
BattlelandNational Security
A pair of stories out this morning highlights just how fat and wealthy your nation’s capital has become. It’s the kind of information that’s likely to turbo-charge Tea Party anger as the rest of the nation struggles with its continuing economic woes. In times past, young Americans would head to major manufacturing cities like Detroit, …
BattlelandNational Security
Money has become so tight at the Pentagon that the nation’s top military officer has decided he doesn’t need a formal oil portrait, costing tens of thousands of dollars, to commemorate his tenure. Instead, Admiral Mike Mullen is going to basically photocopy the portrait already done of him in his prior job as chief of naval operations. …
BattlelandNational Security
No sooner does Defense Secretary Robert Gates succeed in ending production of the Air Force’s F-22 fifth-generation jet fighter than the service is off into the wild blue yonder developing its sixth. The so-called Next Generation Tactical Aircraft — they always begin with boring names before the marketeers get involved and dub them …
BattlelandNational Security
The pro-gay Republican group seeking to overturn the Pentagon’s ban on gay men and women serving openly in the U.S. military has asked the Supreme Court to sweep aside an appellate court’s decision keeping the policy in place while the lower court considers the case. Depending on where you march, there’s both good and bad news …
BattlelandNational Security
A new and striking TV ad, slated to run on cable networks into next year, is produced by Citizens Against Government Waste. The group has maintained for decades has that deficit spending will ruin our children’s future. That apparently hasn’t done the trick: when a founder of the non-partisan group rolled out an anti-deficit TV …
BattlelandNational Security
Rep. Ike Skelton was one of the Democratic heavyweights felled in Tuesday’s election. As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee – and a Missouri congressman for 34 years – I’ve covered him since coming to Washington nearly that long ago. “For my entire life, I’ve had a love affair with the state of Missouri — that love …
