The Army’s failure to cut down on its suicide rate makes it a target for people without taste. Alas, the July figures due out shortly are unlikely to help.
As someone who has covered military suicides, and the folks waging the …
Veterans
The PTSD Merry-Go-Round Continues to Spin
Colonel Dallas Homas has been reinstated as commander at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. That is great news.
What troubles me is that there remains a widespread belief that there …
Female Generals: The Pentagon’s First Pair of Four-Star Women
Things certainly have changed since Janet Wolfenbarger walked up the long ramp at the Air Force Academy in 1976, under a sign declaring in two-foot high brushed aluminum letters: BRING …
“Don't Ask Don't Tell: Gay soldier and fellow (straight) soldier who served together in Iraq or Afghanistan (ideally the straight soldier was helped by the gay soldier, i.e., medic, in fire fight).”
“It seems unlikely that female members of the Army versus those of the other service branches are truly at higher risk of clinically significant mental, musculoskeletal, reproductive system, and respiratory disorders as well as headaches (including migraines) after wartime service in the same geographic regions…Whatever the case, the finding deserves further investigation.”
Is the Military Racist?
Hey, Battleland didn’t write that headline – it’s atop an article written by Rajiv Srinivasan over at Time Ideas:
If there’s one thing I hope America remembers about our military, it’s that we are indeed a cross-section of the country. If bigotry and insensitivity exists in our ranks, it’s because it originated in our society
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“Sequestration is this crazy-named, nutty process that was put in place in order to force Congress to do the right thing. They put a gun to their head in order to do the right thing. And then when they fail to do the right thing, they're ready to pull the trigger.”
Firing for Effect 2.0
Back in January, Battleland reported on 157 Air Force majors the service was booting out after 15 years in uniform. There had been a policy of letting such airmen make their 20 years to be eligible for a pension, but budget cutting had made that impossible in their case, the Air Force said.
Such bad-tasting medicine is increasingly …
Military Psychiatrists at War: True Life and Death Decisions
The Sikh Temple Shooter’s Army Past — and a U.S. Army Sikh’s Reaction
After James Holmes launched a Batman-movie massacre in Colorado on July 20 that killed 12, the U.S. Army quickly issued a statement declaring that he had never served in an Army uniform. Monday morning, Aug. 6, alas, Battleland …
Epic Battle Of The Pacific, Forgotten In Japan
TOKYO – When dignitaries and guests gather on the remote island of Guadalcanal this week to commemorate the epic battle where Japan’s relentless advance in World War II was finally halted, one group will be conspicuous by …
New Study: U.S. Military Suicide Rate Now Likely Double or Triple Civil War’s
Editor’s note: we spent a lot of time trying to dig up historical data on suicide in the U.S. military for our recent story on the current epidemic. The Army itself has only been keeping accurate suicide statistics for about 30 years, making historical comparisons difficult. A pair of scholars in the field has just released a
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