“…more people have the ability to harm us or restrict our freedom to act today than at any point in our lives.”
A Risky Game Over Japan’s Disputed Islands
TOKYO – Whether it’s a genuine attempt to steer Japan’s foreign policy or a clever ploy to annoy political leaders in both Japan and China, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara’s plan to buy three disputed islands in the East …
A Lagging Indicator
Even as the pace of war, and the number of Americans waging it, is falling, their need for mental-health care is growing. On Thursday, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it is boosting its mental-health workforce by …
To the Shores of Morocco…
A Contract Designed to Prevent…
…a repeat of the embarrassing B-2 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during NATO’s 1999 war on Serbia. The Pentagon awarded this “experimental serious games” contract (for $9-million-plus, it had better be serious) Thursday (click on it to enlarge). Just in time, too. Wouldn’t want to blow the Chinese Embassy in Tehran …
Play Ball!
Along with the pain, there are some real bright spots in the ongoing saga of veterans returning home. One such is the Home Base program sponsored by the Boston Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital.
The program started about three years ago, and brings together the Red Sox Nation with the clinical expertise at Mass …
Depleted Uranium: Getting a 2nd Opinion
Remember the controversy over the Pentagon’s armor-killing depleted-uranium rounds that were widely used for the first time in 1991’s Gulf War? Many troops blamed them for the various ills that came to be known as Gulf War …
Defense Budgets: The “Drole de Guerre”
The next seven months is going to be fun for bloggers, journalists, and other remnants of the chattering class, but it won’t shed much truth. Wait until November for that. The latest rounds have been fired this week. The …
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The Resiliency Trade
The Pentagon is institutionalizing resiliency, referring to a soldier’s ability to shake off the horrors of war and go back and experience them again (it has become such a buzzword that the Army has changed the name of its once-heralded Battlemind program to Resilience Training). Over at the Time Ideas blog, learning scholar Annie …
Brass Ceiling Cracking?
The Marine Corps is planning to let women enroll in its school that trains infantry combat officers. It’s not the same as letting women serve in front-line combat units, but it’s definitely a step in that direction.
A top …
Two Unrelated Wednesday Afternoon Events
1. The Army announced that there were a total of 28 suspected suicides in its active and reserve ranks, nearly double February’s suspected toll of 15 suicides.
2. The San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco, released a study showing that Vietnam-era vets who did more killing during their …
Betting on the Come
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Wednesday that “our strategy is right, our strategy is working, and if we stick to it, we can achieve the mission of establishing an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself, and …