“Ten years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. government does not have a single definition for `homeland security.'”
BattlelandMilitary Spending
The Defense Budget Non-Debate
Last week, as he issued his political budget, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan tried to pull the “Generals are not telling us the honest truth” rabbit out of the hat. The Wisconsin Republican was suggesting that either the military leadership was lying — in saying they could live with $487 billion less over the next 10 …
BattlelandVeterans
Veterans Looking for More Than Just Government Jobs
“So you’re not planning on going back into government?” The question came from an executive at a prominent consulting firm, but I (Michael) had heard it often before. At networking events in industries ranging from …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Good News Is Hard to Find
It’s getting tougher to find good news from Afghanistan these days. “Good news has a hard time making it to the headlines these days, but the fact is there is good news,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday about the …
BattlelandMarines
Very Social Darwinism
The first Marines have just pivoted toward the Pacific – as President Obama pledged the U.S. military would do – with their initial six-month deployment to Darwin, Australia. That’s a scant 3,700 miles from Beijing. It’s a …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Storm Clouds Gathering Over There…and Back Home
The disasters over the last three months — including American troops urinating on Afghan corpses, burning Qurans, and the massacre of Afghan civilians, including women and children, by at least one American soldier — have …
97%, 40%, 89%, Less Than 1%
BattlelandPresident Obama
“Hey Mr. President…
…you sure you want Air Force One pilot training going to the lowest bidder?” (h/t astronaut Alan Shepard)
BattlelandDefense Contractors
Pentagon Contractor = Iranian Contractor?
Is a Pentagon contractor doing business with Iran, the North Star of the Axis of Evil (NSAE)? Former Time comrade Adam Zagorin probes the relationship among the Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company, Tehran, and the Pentagon. It’s an investigation for the Project on Government Oversight, an independent stone unturner. “Amid renewed …
BattlelandAir Force
W-2, F-35: Trouble With Numbers
You have to wonder if the Air Force can’t get its W-2 forms straight for 30,000 airmen – about 10% of the force – how can it help manage the financially-troubled $400 billion F-35 program? It seems changes in state tax laws – don’t these happen every year? – weren’t properly folded into the W-2 calculations the Pentagon’s …
BattlelandAfghanistan
How To Make Amends
Army Lieut. Colonel David Oclander knows a thing about trying to turn lemons into lemonade in Afghanistan:
In 2010 I was responsible for the accidental death of two little girls in a remote village in Southern Afghanistan. The events occurred in a village that sat in the middle of a critical valley that the Afghan Army and my
…
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
The Afghan Massacre: Lariam’s Rise and Fall
Since my first post March 20 about the possibility that Staff Sergeant Robert Bales may have been on the anti-malaria drug Lariam (mefloquine), I have received many comments and e-mails on the issue. Bales has been charged with murdering 17 Afghan civilians last month outside Kandahar.
There is a lot more in the literature since a …
BattlelandMilitary Health
Collateral Damage
Seven-hundred and thirty days. That’s the average length of time – two years – that a wounded Marine spends at Camp Lejeune’s Wounded Warrior Battalion before leaving the corps. If you think two years as a patient is too …