Insurgents killed Army Sgt. John Paul Castro April 22 in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. He was on his third combat tour — one to Iraq, two to Afghanistan — in his less-than-seven-year career. Castro’s last mission was “a fight that occurred at distances measured in hand-grenade range, within a complex environment of walled mazes …
Troops
Chilling Tale from Afghanistan…
…will be on the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:
“Ask them, ‘Do they understand why we shot this dude?’ ” the lieutenant told his interpreter. During their last patrol to Qualaday, soldiers in the platoon had attacked Mullah Allah Dad with rifles and a fragmentation grenade that blew off the lower halves of his
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Afghan Allies?
On Monday, about 500 prisoners, including more than 100 Taliban commanders, escaped from an Afghan-run jail in Kandahar. On Wednesday, a ticked-off Afghan pilot pulled a gun at Kabul airport, killing eight U.S. troops and a contractor before he was killed, news sources report from Afghanistan. The officer “opened fire on foreign …
CBO Defense Option #4
The Congressional Budget Office suggests combining the Pentagon’s separate grocery stores (commissaries) and department stores (exchanges) into one entity, instead of having four separate retail chains. Sounds like a no-brainer, especially given the domestic competition many of these outfits now face from places like Walmart. …
Military Exercises
Those SEAL commandos — their nickname represents their prowess on SEa, Air and Land — are a tough bunch. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus was out at their training school in Coronado, Calif., recently. He says he was amazed by the strength of even those just beginning the rigorous regimen to become a member of the Navy’s special-ops …
Misery on the Home Front…
From an Army wife’s blog comes the downside of a decade of war. And no, contrary to her lede (as we spell it in the ink-stained wretch trade) she hasn’t killed herself. Not yet anyway.
CBO Defense Option #2
Another Congressional Budget Office way to trim defense spending is to slow the rate of growth in troops’ pay. That’s going to be a tough sell, especially during wartime. For a decade, Congress has boosted the Pentagon’s annual recommendation that military pay raises match the employment cost index by adding 0.5% to each year’s ECI. …
Time Sails On…
Last week, the Navy decommissioned the USS Jarrett, a guided-missile frigate. Time spent at sea sears memories, and I well recall the several days I spent aboard Jarrett in 2000, shadowing Commander Kathleen McGrath, the captain …
CBO On Defense Options
Every year, the green eye-shade crowd at the Congressional Budget Office takes its weed-whacker to the federal budget in its poetically-titled Reducing the Deficit: Spending and Revenue Options. The CBO doesn’t make any recommendations about what its masters — those would be the members of Congress — should do. It simply lists some …
Progress
A Constellation of Bronze Stars
Here’s something you don’t see every day: a U.S. bomb-disposal expert getting three Bronze Stars pinned on for a single tour. It happened April 18 at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, where Master Sgt. Benjamin Horton collected the trio for his heroics as an explosive ordnance disposal team leader. The citations for the medals lauded Horton …
Memo to the Military: Money’s Tight and Getting Tighter
Ashton Carter is the U.S.military’s chief weapons buyer. Judging from what he said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation about saving money in the defense budget, his job is about to get much more complicated if the Obama Administration gets its way by trying to reduce the federal budget deficit on the backs of those in …
It Ain’t The Money, It’s The Lack of Control and Presence of Stupidity
Four of every five young U.S. military officers who hang up their uniforms say the best officers are bailing from the military’s ranks. And it isn’t about the money, according to a new study. The report, by two graduate students at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, asked 250 young officers to list their reasons for …