Some Army mental-health professionals say official instructions urging them to avoid declaring a soldier mentally ill in war zones keeps too many such ailing troops in combat. It’s part of a stretched Army’s quest to keep …
Army
Afghan Massacre: Rush To Judgment
For the past few days, Washington’s, America’s, probably much of the world’s airways have been filled with commentary about the horrific killings in Afghanistan allegedly committed by an American soldier. Radio, TV and the blogosphere have been inundated with reports, predictions, and speculation—why he did it, what it means for …
The Afghan Massacre
A 38-year old U.S. Army staff sergeant allegedly left his forward operating base, by himself, in southern Afghanistan near Kandahar early Sunday. He reportedly knocked on several doors and entered at least two houses, where he …
Battlefield Stress Could Have Triggered Afghan Massacre
The homeland of the Taliban, where Sunday’s apparent civilian massacre took place, is a “pressure cooker” for U.S. troops assigned there. Their nearly daily contact with bloodshed could push an unstable soldier to lash out by …
Army Suicide: Tip of the Service’s “Mental Health Iceberg”
Nearly half of the Army’s suicides may have been caused by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new Army assessment of the problem says. Tracing the roots of suicide is always an inexact science, but the authors conclude:
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Afghanistan: Shok Therapy
A pair of intrepid reporters has just published No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan. Veteran journalists Mitch Weiss, now at the AP — who won a Pulitzer Prize while at the Toledo Blade in 2004 — and Kevin Maurer, who has traveled frequently with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, tell the tale of a Special Forces team …
Home At Last…
RIP: Magnificent Valor
In the spring of 1944, the focus of the American army in Europe was the fighting in Italy. Van Barfoot was a sergeant in the 157th Infantry, part of the 45th Division. The 25 men in his platoon, like the other 150,000 Americans on the beachhead, had been bombed and shelled regularly by German aircraft and artillery since they arrived …
Life Inside a Baghdad ER
The war in Iraq is over. But the memories and recollections will be with us for decades to come. It’s nice, for a change, to focus on those who dedicated their time in country to saving, rather than taking, lives.
Dr. Todd Baker has just published Baghdad ER: Fifteen Minutes, about his tour as chief of the emergency section of …
A Bright Shining Line
Those of us of a certain sell-by date recall John Paul Vann’s searing tale of Vietnam in Neil Sheehan’s A Bright Shining Lie.
The title resonates in light of recent screw-ups by the U.S. military, with the addition of one …
“Good Morning, Afghanistan!”
“Responsibilities encompass habitat maintenance measures such as grass mowing by hand and by machine, shrub removal by hand and by forest mill, excavation of small puddles with swamp land excavator and underwater reed mowing with amphibian TRUXOR machine.”
