Americans will celebrate Memorial Day next month, and honor those who’ve died while serving to protect the rest of us. But some concerned members of Congress are going to skip their hometown barbeques so they can hit the road: …
Military Families
Rhetoric Gone MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction)
Part of the reason that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta fears that sequestration – the budget axe slated to chop another $500 billion or so out of the military over the coming decade if Congress can’t get its act together – is how each side is welded to its will-not-budge goals.
Of course, he was speaking of his former comrades …
No Wonder Army Pay Is Fouled Up
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 …
F-22 Crash: The Widow Sues
Jeff Haney’s widow has sued the builders of the Air Force’s hottest warplane, contending its defective oxygen-breathing system killed her husband in November 2010. Anna Haney has filed suit against Lockheed Martin, Boeing, …
Home At Last…
Sailors’ Time at Sea Heading Skyward
Wars come and go in cycles, and so does everything that accompanies them. The U.S. public wanted war after 9/11, but now they are exhausted. Weapons wax and wane from complex (F-111) to simple (F-16) to complex again (F-35). And …
Military Same-Sex Partner Benefits: “Separate But Not Equal”
The impact felt at the ground-level from our troops involved in same-sex marriages is gaining some high-level attention. On Friday of last week, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. issued this controversial letter to House
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Thanks, General Chiarelli
Tuesday marks the final day in uniform for General Pete Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff. As the service’s No.2 officer, he has been the key driver on fighting to reduce the mental toll of the nation’s wars on its …
“How You Like That Pay, Soldier?”
Troops get paid in lots of different ways. There’s basic pay, allowances, bonuses, incentives and assorted housing, health and retirement bennies. Is this the best way to compensate U.S. military personnel? In other words, are …
Tightening Pentagon Budgets…
…are apparently forcing the Defense Department-run high schools in Europe to “recondition and paint football equipment” for their players:
Dying to Withdraw…
On November 14th, two weeks before he was supposed to go home, Spc. David Emanuel Hickman became the last American service member to be killed in Iraq. While on a regular “presence patrol” in Baghdad, his vehicle was struck …
Should Women Have to Register With Selective Service?
Over at Time’s Ideas blog, a pair of academics urges that women be compelled to register for the draft. Military recruiters use such registration lists to prospect for young talent. That, in turn, would put more females in …
“Prior to 2008...the cremated remains were…turned over to a contractor for incineration, as was the industry standard. If there was any residual matter, it was handled in accordance with the processes at the time…we did not direct the contractor to put any residual material in the landfill.”