BattlelandVeterans
Articles from Contributor
BattlelandVeterans
BattlelandTroops
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 …
BattlelandPakistan
Afghan Jailbreak
Meanwhile, back in the here and now, the Taliban staged a massive jailbreak in Kandahar early Monday that spirited at least 476 prisoners out of the biggest prison in southern Afghanistan. “We do not know if the tunnel was dug from outside or inside the prison,” the warden, Gen. Ghulam Dastagir Mayar, told the New York Times. With allies …
BattlelandNational Security
The Gitmo Files
As if the Obama Administration’s inability to shutter Guantanamo Bay despite its pledge to do so weren’t bad enough, now it has to deal with a torrent of classified documents about the Cuban detainee prison and its 779 inmates.
Here’s what the 700 documents say, in a nutshell:
BattlelandPentagon
A Question For the Obama Administration:
Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that President Obama’s order to cut $400 billion from national-security spending over the next 12 years will force the U.S. military to curtail some of its far-flung duties. “This needs to be a process that is driven by the analysis,” he said, “as well as missions that our elected …
BattlelandNavy
Top Two Officers Overboard
…once again, the Navy has relieved the top two officers on a warship — in this case the USS Ponce — for poor performance. The ship recently participated in the attacks on Libya.
These stories are always distressing, but it’s also bracing to see the service hold senior leaders accountable. Something we don’t see a lot of any more.
BattlelandWeapons
A Trillion Here, a Trillion There
When I started covering the military shortly after the War of 1812, million was a word you heard a lot. Then, once Cap the Knife (for his budget-cutting prowess during his Nixon Administration tenure running the Office of Management and Budget) became Cap the Ladle Weinberger when he ran the Reagan Pentagon, billion became the big …
BattlelandPakistan
Overdosing on `Tea’
BattlelandWeapons
The Predator Feud Drones On
A peek inside the tensions between Islamabad and Washington over the CIA’s use of armed Predator drones over Pakistan to take out Taliban operatives in safe havens along the Af-Pak frontier, from Time’s Omar Waraich in the Pakistani capital.
BattlelandVeterans
Welcome Home, Soldier…
The gap between our publicly professed pride for our returning troops – and how they actually are treated when they need help – never ceases to amaze. The latest on this care chasm is explained on the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post. It details the woes faced by veterans who believe they have been short-changed by the …
BattlelandNational Security
Libya: McCain On What a Political Solution Would Look Like
Asked Friday in Benghazi what a “polical resolution” to the Libyan crisis would look like, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had a brief answer:
I think the political resolution is one that calls for Gadhafi to be one of three places: with his friend Hugo Chavez [in Venezuela], in the International Criminal Court [in the Hague], or with Hitler
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BattlelandNational Security
Libya: Status Report
…speaking of Libya, colleague Ishaan Tharoor brings us up to date about a rare win for the rebels in the western part of the country, also at Global Spin…
BattlelandNational Security
Libya: McCain Swoops Into Benghazi
Over on Global Spin, Time colleague Bruce Crumley notes Sen. John McCain’s visit to Benghazi on Friday. Talk about sending in the drones:
As an ardent and vocal backer the anti-Gaddafi rebels, it’s hardly surprising McCain made the journey to Benghazi to demonstrate his support of the opposition. Nor is it illogical he used that
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