I visited Joint Base Lewis-McCord in Washington state last week, to attend the retirement of a good friend of mine, another Army psychiatrist who has served for many years.
I have blogged before about my dismay at the allegations swirling around the post’s Madigan Army Medical Center. But this was my first time back to Madigan in …
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 …
There’s a head-turning article in the latest edition of the Journal of Family Issues (admittedly something rarely found on Battleland’s nightstand) about how well military marriages are faring after 10 years of war.
After …
“Between the expense of purchasing these items and the fact that our operations don't involve flying, this recommendation was good common sense.”
This chart comes from a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday. It’s funny how some Pentagon costs seemed to have turned on their afterburners in the wake of 9/11.
A career website has just issued a ranking of 200 jobs from best to worst. They range from software engineer (#1, the best) to lumberjack (#200, the worst). Their placement is purportedly based on each job’s environment, physical demands, income, stress and future prospects (reporter: #196. That high?). Here are the three …
You have to wonder if the Air Force can’t get its W-2 forms straight for 30,000 airmen – about 10% of the force – how can it help manage the financially-troubled $400 billion F-35 program? It seems changes in state tax laws – don’t these happen every year? – weren’t properly folded into the W-2 calculations the Pentagon’s …
When the war in Afghanistan began ten years ago, some of the most grievously wounded troops have come through Brooke Army Medical Center, a sprawling green campus less than 10 miles from downtown San Antonio.
BAMC, as the troops call it, has long been home to the Department of Defense’s top burn unit. Then 2007, 600,000 people donated …
There are ancillary upsides to waging war and the defense spending that fuels it. It happens in technology – think the Internet and GPS, for the two most recent significant Pentagon-sparked advances – and medicine, …
Soldiers are forever complaining about how their paychecks are wrong. Here’s a chart from a new Government Accountability Office report that shows just how many places the Army payroll process can get screwed up.
If you’re really a sucker for paycheck punishment, you can click on the chart to enlarge it. Or if you’re an Army …
David Wood has done some of the finest reporting on the wounds of war, both seen and unseen. His latest lays bare the serious genital wounding of hundreds of U.S. troops that’s rarely acknowledged:
“Who’s going to want to be with me now?” wondered Marine Staff Sgt. Glen Silva, 39, after an IED blast shattered his leg, ripped open his
…
Our nation is struggling to understand the horrific act of violence by one U.S. soldier last Sunday that left 16 Afghan civilians dead – many of whom were children.
Though apparently planned, this was an irrational act—one …
