BattlelandPentagon
The debate over Iraq’s future – hopeful, according to the Obama Administration, hopeless, according to its critics – has begun in earnest. It was kicked off by the Administration’s recent decision that all U.S. troops will be home for the holidays. The White House blames Iraq’s parliament, which has refused to grant U.S. troops …
BattlelandVeterans
“Trust me, the first thing you do is check your [junk.]”
This is how a rehabbing Army soldier describes the immediate post-IED blast scene in Bob Drury’s new piece “Signature Wound,” available through Amazon’s Kindle Singles. Drury, a contributing editor and foreign correspondent for Men’s Health, explores the …
BattlelandWeapons
The Pentagon always insists that its peace-time budgets don’t fund any war-fighting. That’s why it’s always seeking so-called supplementals when the balloon goes up. But here’s a dirty little secret: the Pentagon has routinely used such budget add-ons to buy weapons that have little to do with day-to-day war-fighting.
The Henry L. …
BattlelandWeapons
A Taliban suicide bomber killed 12 Americans — four troops and eight contract workers — four Afghans, and a Canadian soldier, when he rammed his bomb-laden Toyota into an armored bus in Kabul Saturday. The brazen attack marked the deadliest strike against Americans in the Afghan capital since the U.S. invaded 10 years ago this …
BattlelandNational Security
Ben Freeman, my colleague at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), published a piece in The Hill’s website today that debunks myths surrounding the debt deal and defense spending. Check it out.
BattlelandVeterans
Joseph Heller’s classic is 50 years old. Unfortunately, it still rings true in today’s military, according to this BBC article:
In Catch-22, for those lower down the food chain, there is nowhere to go to question methods. The same can be true today mainly because the army employs the same top-down reporting system that was in
…
BattlelandProcurement
The Pentagon’s habit of concurrency – building a weapon before you’ve finished the blueprints for it – is rearing its ugly head once again. Frankly, having witnessed it for decades, the logic behind it is less than compelling. It’s often cited as necessary to keep up with the Russians or the Chinese or the Somebody Else, …
BattlelandVeterans
Clifford Stanley, the retired two-star Marine general who spent the past 20 months as the Pentagon’s personnel chief, is stepping down. He came in for a lot of criticism for an allegedly lousy management style. There are IG probes into alleged misspent money and personnel mismanagement — a bizarre topic for the guy in charge of …
BattlelandVeterans
For those of us to young to remember, the exploits of the Navajo code talkers during World War II have become legend. They were the guys who transmitted messages in their native language (with some English mixed in) between the Marine units closing in on Japan – a code the Japanese could not crack. Chester Nez, now 90, tells his …
BattlelandTroops
So far this year, the Navy has relieved 21 commanding officers. The details surrounding Commander Jay Wylie, captain aboard the USS Momsen, are just now coming to light. One has to credit the Navy with airing its dirty laundry from the halyard, for all to see. But one also has to wonder: how did such an apparent creep end up …
BattlelandVeterans
For folks of a certain age, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations bring back memories of Chicago (“The whole world is watching”) 1968, and the anti-war protest I covered in Boston. How come there is scant protest about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars now?
Is it because they have been waged so brilliantly and economically that …
BattlelandVeterans
It usually takes months for retired chairmen of the Joint Chiefs to have their formal portraits hung in the Pentagon’s E-ring hallway, alongside all those who have come before. But not so in the case of Admiral Mike Mullen, who left his post as the nation’s top military officer September 30.
Strolling along that wood-lined …
BattlelandVeterans
Dear Mr. Capps,
We made a decision on your claim for service connected compensation received on July 22, 2010.
The letter came in today’s mail. Day 470; for me, Decision Day. Things have moved really quickly in the past week. On October 20th, I posted a note here that I had been waiting 15 months—463 days—for a decision on my …
