Marines

Military Alcohol Use, Chapter 2

We noted Monday that alcoholism has become an increasing problem for the U.S. military. Want proof (no pun intended): check out this story from California’s North County Times, which does a good job covering what’s happening at the Marine Corps’ nearby Camp Pendleton:

A Marine found dead in his barracks room at Camp Pendleton

An Army Apart: The Widening Military-Civilian Gap

The U.S. military and American society are drifting apart. It’s tough inside the civilian world to discern the drift. But troops in all the military services sense it, smell it — and talk about it. So do their superiors. We have a professional military of volunteers that has been stoically at war for more than a decade. But as the …

What’s Going On? The Joint Chiefs Should Be Partying Like It’s 2007…

The spectacle now infecting the Pentagon would be humorous, if it weren’t so serious. The notion that the military can cut $450 billion out of its next-decade budget of something like $7 trillion – but not a penny more – suggests an (artillery) shell game’s afoot.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – the …

The Rest of the Story…

This story blipped on the radar screen Friday. Funny how stories that some folks would rather not see the light of day end up seeing the light of Saturday’s poorly-read papers. The Pentagon inspector general issued a report saying the Marines fumbled rape allegations made by Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach in 2007 against Corporal …

About Those Suspected Chinese-American Troops’ Suicides

The U.S. military is fervently hoping this trend doesn’t continue: just because U.S. troops in Afghanistan allegedly physically abused a pair of Chinese-American troops before each took his own life doesn’t mean they were picked on because of their ethnicity. We’ve reported recently on the suspected suicides of Marine Harry …

“Stanley Steamer” Calls It Quits

Clifford Stanley, the retired two-star Marine general who spent the past 20 months as the Pentagon’s personnel chief, is stepping down. He came in for a lot of criticism for an allegedly lousy management style. There are IG probes into alleged misspent money and personnel mismanagement — a bizarre topic for the guy in charge of …

A Navajo Code Talker…Speaks So We Can Understand, at Last

For those of us to young to remember, the exploits of the Navajo code talkers during World War II have become legend. They were the guys who transmitted messages in their native language (with some English mixed in) between the Marine units closing in on Japan – a code the Japanese could not crack. Chester Nez, now 90, tells his …

A Japanese Itch That Won’t Go Away…

The fate of Futenma Air Station on Okinawa remains a thorn between the U.S. military and its Japanese hosts. As the city of Ginowan has grown up around the base, locals have been pushing to have it moved. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, now in Japan, agrees, but the push has been underway for 16 years. Larry Shaughnessy over at CNN’s …

The Party

Only a month ago I was unable to disclose my status as a gay man in the military. Fast forward to Tuesday of last week, when I stood as a guest to a party celebrating the launch of the anthology “Our Time“, a collection of stories from other gay, lesbian, and straight servicemembers, negatively affected by the “Don’t Ask” ban on open …

The Story So Far

As of Thursday of this week, “Don’t Ask” has been dead for a month. To this point, the outreach I’ve received from peers and coworkers has been extremely positive, which appears to be the trend across all branches of the services. Contrary to all of the hullabaloo raised by those against the repeal, to my knowledge there hasn’t …

Up-Armored Underwear

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDTO6qfrVTE&feature=player_embedded]

Marines are tough, but they know what isn’t. That’s why they’re now getting two layers of protection to shield their southern zones from improvised explosive devices (h/t TPM.)

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