I am not a veteran and I am not a military family member. But I have had the honor and privilege of knowing many military families over the last seven years. My father served in the Navy during WWII long before I was born. He …
Military Health
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 …
Honoring Courage and Cool-Headedness
Where Miracles are Made: An Inside Look at the Center for the Intrepid
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 …
Dear John Letter 2.0
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
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Marines Publish a Book On The End of `Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
When the Pentagon was wrestling with the idea of ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” ban on gay men and women serving openly in the military, the Marine Corps quickly came to be seen as the service most opposed to the change. After all, General James Amos said he feared lifting the ban would be a “distraction” that could lead …
Alcohol In The Ranks
There are reports that alcohol illicitly consumed by Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales in Afghanistan a week ago may have been the final link in a chain of stressors that caused him to “snap” and slaughter 16 …
Life Inside a Baghdad ER
The war in Iraq is over. But the memories and recollections will be with us for decades to come. It’s nice, for a change, to focus on those who dedicated their time in country to saving, rather than taking, lives.
Dr. Todd Baker has just published Baghdad ER: Fifteen Minutes, about his tour as chief of the emergency section of …
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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Real Soldiers, Fake Pregnancies
Army combat vets – remember, they’re limited to men — are donning fake breasts and bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training. It’s part of the service’s Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course.
“This whole thing is pretty uncomfortable,” Sergeant Michael …
The Pentagon’s New IED Report: Impressively Expressed Dawdling
IEDs are an interesting tool of war: they have accounted for nearly half of the U.S. KIAs in recent years, and their very simplicity is an erect middle finger to U.S. military might and technological prowess. The Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has just issued its Counter-Improvised Explosive Device …
A Two-War Hangover
The Pentagon brass are trekking to Capitol Hill this week to detail how they’re trimming their budgets now that all U.S. troops are out of Iraq, and have begun coming home from Afghanistan. But it’s important to remember that wars’ costs last far longer than wars’ duration.
Here’s a new chart from the Department of …
A Personal War-Cost Calculator You Can Use at Home
Sure, there have always been those anti-war sites, trying to undermine support for the nation’s wars by showing us how much they cost; the dollars – which just topped $1.3 trillion, according to this calculation — flash by like a Times Square news ribbon.
Then there is this, more personal cost calculator just launched by the …