“Loyalty ends when the money runs out.”
BattlelandMarines
Afghanistan’s Helmand Province: Both Sides Now
Over the weekend, GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry and the conservative, pro-military Moving American Forward advocacy group defended the Marines who allegedly urinated on Taliban corpses. This is what happens when politics …
BattlelandNavy
“Aye-Aye Skipper!” There Should Be More Stories Like This…
Hoo Yah!!! (that’s Navy diver-speak for “this is good”). In the January 16th edition of Navy Times, there’s finally a good news story about “Amazing Skippers” …Commanding officers who are considered to be the best in …
BattlelandTroops
Taking the ‘D’ Out of P.T.S.D.
Ever since Battleland raised this issue with then-top-Army doc Lieut. General Peter Schoomaker four years ago, there’s been a whirring debate over changing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to Post-Traumatic Stress, or some other less-stigmatizing label. The logic is pretty simple: in the nooks and crannies of our brains where bad …
“Quiet Heroes”
They’re somewhere on the warfare spectrum between hard-charging infantrymen who live to kill, and combat medics, who live to save lives. They’re the explosive ordnance disposal techs, the guys who risk life and limb to find and …
BattlelandMilitary
Battleland Diary, Jan. 7-13
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
BattlelandMilitary
Viral Atrocities and the Dark Complexity of War
A funny thing happens when you speak with a room full of school children–they have a tendency to say exactly what’s on their minds. When I returned from my first tour in Iraq, just before Christmas 2006, the principals in my …
BattlelandChina
The Perfect Headline on the Silent Sino-American Limited Liability Partnership
Comes from Bloomberg:
China Gets Cheaper Iran Oil as U.S. Picks Up Tab for Hormuz Straits Patrols
Brilliant huh?
But a wonderful capture of the illogic of Obama’s “strategic pivot” to East Asia: the more we try to hem in …
BattlelandAir Force
Great Moments in Military Aviation: Death of a Blimp
How can the Air Force lose a blimp two-thirds the size of a football field? When the winds are wrong, alas, anything can happen.
Battleland readers of a certain vintage may recall, with wonder and delight, the goofy …
BattlelandIran
We Mean It This Time
Sunday, January 8, on CBS’s Face the Nation:
We have made very clear that the United States will not tolerate blocking of the Straits of Hormuz. That’s another red line for us — and that we will respond to that.
— Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
Friday, January 13, on the front page of the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — The
…
BattlelandJapan
Marines on Okinawa: Time to Leave?
TOKYO – More than six decades after U.S. Marines stormed ashore on Okinawa, it may finally be time for them to go home. Japan Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Friday fired his defense minister, in part for missteps and verbal …
BattlelandMarines
A Onetime Marine Scout Sniper on What His Comrades Did to the Dead Taliban
Alex Lemons, a former Marine sergeant who deployed to Iraq three times – including once as scout sniper – reflects on the video of four Marines urinating on the corpses of three dead Taliban in Afghanistan:
This is all …
BattlelandMarines
The Few. The Proud. The Morons.
[vodpod id=Video.15946643&w=425&h=350&fv=%26amp%3B]
Senator John McCain said the viral video clip of U.S. Marines in Afghanistan apparently urinating on three corpses identified as Taliban enemy dead “makes me so sad” on CBS Thursday morning.
There’s not a lot else that needs to be said.