Iraq

The Gearbox

The U.S. military is the world’s pre-eminent military force — by far — and most of that is because of its people and the way they train and led. But they’re none to shabby on the hardware side of the house, either. I just cobbled together a menu of the weapons systems used in recent U.S. military actions for Time.com and it has …

Up On the Net

Before I introduce myself, I want to thank all of the readers of this column for your kind words about my first post. David Self was a wonderful person and a dedicated NCO. Men and women like him are the backbone of our armed forces; they do the tough business in training and in combat. We lose them far too often and it’s always …

Progress: Women and Men Show Equal Mental Resilience in War Zones

Apparently war is an equal-opportunity destroyer, screwing up female troops’ minds as much — pretty much no more, no less — than those belonging to their male comrades. That’s the bottom line in a new study trying to contrast the mental wounds of war in both genders.

“Study findings suggest that both exposure to combat-related …

Vietnam’s Lessons…and Afghanistan

Colonel Gregory A. Daddis is the author of No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War, published by Oxford University Press. Daddis teaches history at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. He has served in a variety of Army command and staff posts around the world and in …

Memorial Day in the Rearview Mirror: Soldiers as Heroes, and Victims

Elspeth Ritchie was on the front lines dealing with the military’s mental-health issues as an Army psychiatrist, including several senior positions following 9/11, for nearly a quarter century. She has studied and tended to troops’ minds on assignments around the world, including in Cuba, Iraq, Somalia, South Korea and Vietnam. She

TM for PTSD

There are a host of new therapies being tried in the struggle against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder among U.S. troops back from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The latest is transcendental meditation, or, as its advocates prefer, Transcendental Meditation™. Pioneered by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s, a peer-reviewed …

Power Shortage at U.S. Embassy in Baghdad

For years, U.S. officials have bemoaned the lousy electrical service in Iraq, where blackouts persist. Turns out that’s also a problem for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, even though it has its own power plant, according to a State Department IG report released Thursday. Got to love the footnote!

One of the 6,000

On Memorial Day, Americans paid tribute to the men and women who have fought our nation’s wars, especially those who didn’t come home. My new colleague Mark Thompson, who has generously invited me to contribute to Battleland, had some powerful observations about the Pentagon news releases that have trickled down in a “

Different Wars, Same Reaction: Grenade-Throwing Heroes

The White House has announced that Army Staff Sergeant Leroy A. Petry is the second living post-9/11 Medal of Honor recipient (seven others have been awarded posthumously). President Obama is slated to bestow the light-blue-beribboned medal — the nation’s highest — at the White House on July 12. Petry earned the honor for what …

Memorial Day, 2011

Memorial Day is a strange holiday when so many Americans are disconnected from the wars now underway. Did you know that over the past week, more than a dozen U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan? It’s easy for me to keep track: I get Pentagon press releases every time a U.S. soldier is killed, sprinkled in among those …

Dempsey To Be Tapped As New Chairman of Joint Chiefs

Well, that was fast. A couple of days ago, Marine General James “Hoss” Cartwright was reported to be a shoe-in to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Meanwhile, Army General Marty Dempsey was still finding his way around his new office as that service’s chief of staff (he’s only been there a little over a month).

But …

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