National Security
“If You Ever Wonder What a Deployment Is Like, Go to Prison”
Some soldiers get along, and others don’t. It’s the latter that make for the most interesting tales when they speak of their time at war. Army Major Ryan Ussery is a logistician – the guy who keeps the beans, bullets and boots coming to the troops on the front lines (motto: Sustinendum Victoriam). He has pulled three tours in Iraq, …
Clock Ticks On China-Japan Islands Dispute
TOKYO – Japan has one year, maybe two, to resolve the ownership dispute over a tiny group of islands or risk an honest-to-goodness shooting war with China. Unfortunately, neither Japan’s diplomats nor public seem to realize …
Refixing the Pentagon. Again.
The professional nitpickers over the Center for a New American Security have just issued a report saying the Defense Department remains welded to the past:
…the Pentagon still has not enacted the types of reforms that we believe are necessary to sustain U.S. military pre-eminence into the future. Too many DOD structures, processes,
…
The President Wants Your Help in Re-Upping
President Obama’s campaign rolled out this “Sacred Trust” ad Wednesday. His re-election effort says it “highlights the President’s strong commitment to honoring our veterans.” It’s part of a $25 million, four-week ad buy in nine states: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and …
Wait-Watchers
Despite the fact that the Department of Veterans Affairs Budget has more than doubled – to about $120 billion – since 2004, it and the Pentagon are falling further behind in assessing whether or not veterans are due disability benefits. This chart, from a Government Accountability Office statement released Wednesday, tells the …
Gimme 5, in Pashto
Honor, Stigma…and PTSD
I’m an old guy from the Vietnam era, a psychiatrist who studied violence in the 1960s, who treated survivors of trauma in the ’70s and who helped create and nurture the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder through the …
And You Thought Mac Software Was Expensive…
Focused Like a Laser, On All the Wrong Things
We used to cover the machinations of the House and Senate armed services committees very closely. Of course, 30 years ago all we cared about was whether 180 or 240 F-16 jets would be ordered in next year’s budget (that’s all our readers at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where the plane is still being built, cared about).
But …
NoKo Non-Nuclear Blast: A Secret Plea for Help?
North Korea has reacted sharply to criticism over the weekend from the working G8 lunch at Camp David. “All of us agree that North Korea is violating its international obligations and that there is a path for them to rejoin the international community,” President Obama said. “But that objective will not be achieved if they continue …
$1,800
Trash Talk…
Trash can be deadly. You can get a hint of that from the contract solicitation issued Tuesday by the Defense Logistics Agency’s European disposition office seeking “hazardous waste services in southwest Asia.”
Lord …