Army

Dr. Frankenstein — or Military Miracle Worker?

A U.S. military doctor deployed to Iraq subjected troops suffering from traumatic brain injuries to treatment with an unapproved drug, in which he had a financial stake, that may have harmed them, Pentagon investigators report. But a colleague of the doctor insists the probe is a perplexing witch hunt — and that the medication helps …

Can’t Tell? Then Publish!

In buildings on military installations, it is common to see a rack of news papers and magazines as you walk in. On a few of those racks now lays a magazine put out by an independent network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered servicemembers known as OutServe.

This is the organization’s second issue of the magazine and so …

The Third Rail: Guns and Suicide in the Army

As a top Army psychiatrist until last year, I always found the Army’s silence about guns’ role in our rising suicide rate disquieting. The Army is committed to lowering the rate of suicide. But there’s a curious third rail that is seldom publicly discussed: the risks of suicide by firearm. Approximately 70 percent of Army and …

Army Uniforms: Everything But Uniform



First, the Army ditches the black beret for most soldiers at most times. Now it’s abandoning the wearing of combat fatigues inside the Pentagon. “Is it bad that this excites me more than the death of Bin Laden?” one soldier, apparently from Fort Drum, N.Y., writes on an Army Facebook page. “Kidding…Kind of.”

A decade after 9/11, …

An Army Birthday Gift–So Long Black Beret!

It’s without an ounce of wistfulness that I bid adieu to one of the most ridiculous and unpopular pieces of Army-issue equipment–the black beret. For the past decade, when soldiers were not in Iraq or Afghanistan, they suffered through parades, formations and all manner of long walks with sweaty, misshapen plops of wool covering …

Apparently, All’s Not Fair in Love and War

The one-time head of the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade — one of the service’s most celebrated units — had an “inappropriate relationship” with the wife of his Iraqi cultural adviser, an Army investigation has concluded. The probe, obtained by Stars and Stripes, concludes Colonel James H. Johnson III was infatuated with the woman, …

The Winter Set Up: Counter-Insurgency in Kandahar

The fighting season in Afghanistan is in full swing, and the early reports indicate this one will be tough. After last year’s surge, American units, and the Afghan Army and police they’re partnered with, will be fighting to hold the areas they paid for dearly a year ago. One of the key provinces will be Kandahar.

In the months …

The Gearbox

The U.S. military is the world’s pre-eminent military force — by far — and most of that is because of its people and the way they train and led. But they’re none to shabby on the hardware side of the house, either. I just cobbled together a menu of the weapons systems used in recent U.S. military actions for Time.com and it has …

Be Very Ashamed

Megan McCloskey at Stars and Stripes has just run the first of a two part piece on suicide in the army and it’s a ripper. In it, she details what drove Army Specialist Brushaun Anderson to kill himself at a remote firebase in Iraq on New Year’s Day, 2010. I think it should be required reading for leaders at all levels of the Army.

A …

Documents Like This…

…make you wonder just what the heck it is we are doing in Afghanistan. It’s a new, 33-page Army contract solicitation seeking Facebook and Twitter experts who can sell the U.S. message to the locals. Makes one wonder why we are investing our blood and treasure in a fight that has to be sold to the people whose lives we are supposedly …

Up On the Net

Before I introduce myself, I want to thank all of the readers of this column for your kind words about my first post. David Self was a wonderful person and a dedicated NCO. Men and women like him are the backbone of our armed forces; they do the tough business in training and in combat. We lose them far too often and it’s always …

Progress: Women and Men Show Equal Mental Resilience in War Zones

Apparently war is an equal-opportunity destroyer, screwing up female troops’ minds as much — pretty much no more, no less — than those belonging to their male comrades. That’s the bottom line in a new study trying to contrast the mental wounds of war in both genders.

“Study findings suggest that both exposure to combat-related …

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