National Security
Military Photos: A Week Inside the Armed Forces, July 14-22
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines from around the world, and the home front.
Dancin’ Marines
These days, when troops get bored in the war zone – and there’s plenty of time for that to happen – they make music videos. Here’s the latest from the Marines (and some soldiers) at Kandahar airfield in Afghanistan, lip-syncing to what Battleland is told is Carly Rae Jepson’s summer hit “Call Me Maybe.”
Dan Lamothe …
Gone Fishin’
Actually, not. But I’m headed out for a couple of weeks off and won’t be worrying about reeling in Battleland items. Leaving that up to Time writer and Army vet Nate Rawlings. Be nice to him.
Portrait of a Suburb: Aurora Gets on the Map — But Not the Way It Wanted
Diverse and aspiringly middle-class, the biggest suburb in Colorado is home to defense contractors and the Pentagon’s drone monitoring operation. Now it will be known as the town of the Batman massacre.
What’s That Noise Coming from the Pentagon?
“We spend about $10 million per hour in the Afghanistan war and right now we are losing a soldier every day to suicide. Shifting an hour’s worth of war funding to the fight of preventing soldier suicides is the least we can do.”
Iraq: The Steaks Were High
Major Bryan Cecrie spent much of 2005 in Iraq’s “triangle of death” south of Baghdad. The horrors of war were real, and meals were supposed to be an opportunity to take the edge off, he told the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in this April interview:
The cooks always think they are doing you a favor when
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General’s Final Flight
Female Vets Running for Congress: Into Double Digits
Four months back, I wrote about four female veterans running for Congress. It turns out they’re not the only ones, by a long shot.
And boy are they needed: in the 112th Congress, women only hold 16% of the 435 House seats and 17 of the 100 seats in the Senate. Amazingly, there are only 92 veterans in the House of Representatives, …
Common Sense from an Enlisted Man
No, not just any enlisted man, but Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Roy, the service’s senior enlisted man. It’s unusual not only because it comes from an enlisted leader, but because it comes from the Air Force, …
The Empire Strikes Back
The latest chilling dispatch from a reporter known only as “A Time Reporter in Syria”:
“Is it real? Is it really almost over?” asked a young FSA fighter who took up arms a year ago. “I’m so sick of guns, bullets,
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