BattlelandNational Security
The federal judge who ruled the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy unconstitutional last month ordered the U.S. military to stop kicking openly gay men and women out of uniform Tuesday.
Defendants United States of America and the Secretary of Defense immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge,
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BattlelandNational Security
Good piece in the Washington Post this morning. The story is buried in the Metro section when it really should be on Page One. It has to do with the engravings on troops’ grave markers at Arlington National Cemetery, the nation’s troubled final resting place for its honored dead. It tell us something about the Army we’d rather not …
BattlelandNational Security
Kenneth Eugene Clodfelter, Richard Costelow, Lakeina Monique Francis, Timothy Lee Gauna, Cheron Luis Gunn, James Rodrick McDaniels, Mark Ian Nieto, Ronald Scott Owens, Lakiba Nicole Palmer, Joshua Langdon Parlett, Patrick Howard Roy, Kevin Shawn Rux, Ronchester Mananga Santiago, Timothy Lamont Saunders, Gary Graham Swenchonis Jr. Andrew …
BattlelandNational Security
It’s fitting that as Army Maj. Nidal Hasan faces his first major pre-trial hearing today, the Pentagon is seeking a way to prevent future soldiers from killing their own.
“Each time we see an incident like a soldier in good mental health becoming homicidal or suicidal, or an innocent insider becoming malicious, we wonder why we …
BattlelandNational Security
The man behind the fusillade of bullets that felled 13 people at Fort Hood last November enters the public spotlight for the first time starting Wednesday. That’s a 24-hour delay, granted by the military judge to give Maj. Nidal Hasan’s defense team until then to detail their request for postponing the legal proceeding until Nov. 8. …
BattlelandNational Security
There’s been a ban on U.S. arms sales to China since three days after 1989’s Tiananmen Square clash, when tanks and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army attacked and killed an unknown number of Chinese students. At least until last Friday, that is.
President Obama sent a terse letter to Congress saying it was time for an …
BattlelandNational Security
Linda Norgrove’s death — apparently at the hands of her would-be U.S. military rescuers in Afghanistan last Friday — reminds us that snafu — “situation normal, all fouled up” — is a U.S. military term:
BattlelandNational Security
If something can go wrong in war, it will.
That’s the bottom line from 10 Downing Street today, where Britain’s prime minister said Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove may have been killed by her American rescuers last Friday in Afghanistan, rather than by her Taliban captors.
David Cameron said that General David Petraeus has …
BattlelandNational Security
You know how when your jalopy out in the driveway starts getting old and the transmission goes? Before deciding to spend a coupla grand to fix it, you and your significant other sit around the kitchen table and ask: hey, is it really worth pouring all that money into the old heap?
The U.S. Air Force just sat around its kitchen table …
BattlelandNational Security
Not only are we hiring too many contractors in Afghanistan — we’re also hiring the wrong ones. A year-long probe into the hiring practices of Afghan private contractors released Thursday has found that some had hired lackeys loyal to warlords involved in kidnapping, murder and the Taliban. “There is significant evidence that some …
BattlelandNational Security
The Department of Veterans Affairs has long been viewed as a labyrinth that the nation’s vets have to navigate to get what their country owed them for their military service. In recent years, things have gotten better, due in no small part to a huge increase in its budget. It has soared from $53 billion in 2002 to $125 billion in the …
BattlelandNational Security
The smoke is lifting from the air war the U.S. is waging in Pakistan. Yes, a U.S.-Pakistani probe has found, U.S. helicopters did attack and kill two Pakistani Frontier Scouts — members of the Pakistani military — in a border outpost near Afghanistan on September 30. They fired on the outpost because shots came from it, the …
BattlelandNational Security
It was nine years ago today that the U.S. launched its war on Afghanistan in retaliation for the 9/11 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Here’s a graf from a file I wrote on the eve of the conflict:
As Pentagon planners chart their next moves into Afghanistan, U.S. special forces have a big decision to make. If they are
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