The New America Foundation’s sponsored debate over defense spending showcased two schools of American political thought entirely comfortable with allowing American power and influence to decline on the global stage.
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Thousands of soldiers, gravely wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, become as much as they can be through months of rehabilitation in the Army’s Warrior Transition Units. Every once in awhile a story pops up about how things fells apart for a specific WTU …
We reported on the growing use of prescription drugs by troops in Afghanistan and Iraq more than three years ago. The Pentagon is finally catching up. It wants to spend $23 million next year for drug testing to make sure troops aren’t illicitly taking legal drugs like Valium and Vicodin.
But the House Appropriations Committee has …
We always think of “collateral damage” as harm done to individuals by a wayward bomb. But sometimes collateral damage applies to an entire nation. That’s the sense you get from Mark Kukis’ new book, Voices from Iraq, a People’s History, 2003-2009. He delves into the shards of war to see how those most affected — after all, we …
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been a controversial diagnosis since its inception. Originally called by many names (“compensation neurosis”), it was not officially given the name PTSD until well after the end of the Vietnam War. By then, many veterans with PTSD also were bedeviled with substance abuse, joblessness, and …
Sherlock Holmes famously spoke of the dog that didn’t bark as a key clue in a case of Silver Blaze, a missing racehorse. Then there’s the case of the supposedly missing cash intended to rebuild Iraq. It too involves a criminal case, as well as something absent. In this case, the perpetrator – a Marine jet pilot – seems to have …
A U.S. military doctor deployed to Iraq subjected troops suffering from traumatic brain injuries to treatment with an unapproved drug, in which he had a financial stake, that may have harmed them, Pentagon investigators report. But a colleague of the doctor insists the probe is a perplexing witch hunt — and that the medication helps …
Dov Zakheim was the Pentagon’s top money man when Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld surprised him by tapping Zakheim to run Afghanistan’s reconstruction — in addition to his day job. He writes about the challenges of war-making, nation-building and budget-balancing in A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the …
Soldiers call them “Doc,” but Scott McGaugh calls the military’s medics “Battlefield Angels” in his new book by the same name. Not actually doctors — but not really nurses, either –they’re out on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, armed with guns as well as gauze, and are usually the first ones tending to the physical and …
Soon after Bush administration officials realized they had no plan on what to do after invading Iraq, they figured out they would have to do some reconstruction there. Then they figured out they needed money to pay for that. Then they decided they needed cash. Lots of it.
They literally trucked $20 billion in cash via tractor-trailers …
Former colleague and TIME contributor Adam Zagorin breaks news here on Battleland with exclusive reporting on the latest federal action over the infamous death of “the Iceman” at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003:
By Adam Zagorin
It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — for …
The one-time head of the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade — one of the service’s most celebrated units — had an “inappropriate relationship” with the wife of his Iraqi cultural adviser, an Army investigation has concluded. The probe, obtained by Stars and Stripes, concludes Colonel James H. Johnson III was infatuated with the woman, …