David Cloud’s well-reported piece in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times on the well-appointed mansions that are home to our nation’s top military commanders is attracting a fair amount of attention.
The Thin Red Line of American Law
VENCE, France – I have concerns over the trends toward all-knowing supervision (what former Vice President Dick Cheney called “total information awareness”) and full-spectrum dominance. (Reading such phrases drove me back …
Tip of the Spear Peninsula
Marine Cpl. Sean Abrusci provides security in Helmand province, July 5.
SGT Scapegoat? The Latest on Lariam and the Sergeant
What a difference a month can make.
In late June, I published “A Smoking Pillbox,” about a report of a soldier with a history of traumatic brain injury, who after taking Lariam (mefloquine), had gunned down 16 Afghan …
Nuclear Perspective: What’s the Fallout in Your Neighborhood?
Sure, it’s morbid, but there’s a fascination associated with figuring out just how many of your neighbors – along with you – would perish if a nuclear bomb went off down the street.
That’s the ghoulish tug of
Even Toy Ships Can’t Escape Islands Dispute
TOKYO — It’s not every day that the illustration on a box cover for a model warship can annoy the Chinese, alarm the Japanese and amuse the U.S. Marine Corps – not to mention sinking the model ship itself.
But that’s …
“Senator, would you agree that we have recent experience where until we understood how the country would continue to govern and that institutions of governance wouldn't fail, that actually, situations can be made worse by the introduction of military force?”
— Army General Martin Dempsey, jousting Thursday with Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., over the wisdom of U.S. military involvement in Syria at an armed services committee hearing. The spat led McCain to place a hold on Dempsey’s nomination to serve a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, meaning it can’t proceed until McCain removes that hold. It wasn’t clear whether Dempsey was referring to Afghanistan, Iraq, or both.
So It Ain’t The Bridge On the River Kwai
The engineering students at Utah State University have come up with a backpack-portable bridge that recently captured first place in the Air Force Research Laboratory Design Challenge.
It’s designed to let military personnel …
$221,800,000
— The value of an Army contract, here, announced Thursday, for an unspecified number of “lightweight counter-mortar radars and related parts and services.” As with various anti-IED efforts, that’s a lot of money – nearly a quarter-billion dollars – to deal with a relatively cheap weapon. Given the fact that the U.S. military is pulling out of Afghanistan, it also makes you wonder why they’re stockpiling these things.
Listen to the Band!
Battleland, a one-time trumpeter and tuba-er, likes nothing more than the smart sounds of a squared-away military band.
Sure, there are critics, forever complaining that the U.S. military has more musicians than the State …
Forward Marching, After War
Where do I go from here?
Veterans stripped of a sense of purpose and mission often find themselves asking that question once they leave the service after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With objectives complete and platoons …
Aim High (and Dry)…
The Sun is Setting on the U.S. Presence
A U.S. soldier pulls security in northern Kunduz province, July 15.