I was standing in Arlington Cemetery in V.A when a huge storm was rolling in. I noticed these Air force soldiers standing so perfectly still. As the weather took a turn for the worse, these magnificent soldiers stood there ground. I was truly amazing to see them just standing there as the winds and rain were blowing tress and power lines over. WOW..
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley has resigned, and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne may also be on the brink of resigning, the defense publication InsideDefense.com reported on Thursday.
“Top-level Pentagon officials gave Moseley the option to resign or be fired during a meeting this morning,” the website reported, quoting an unidentified military official. “Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne also could resign later today,” it said.
Our gun toting friend Slaytonic posted this article in a comments section with a request to post it. I don’t believe this will ever happen, but I could be wrong. I have mixed emotions about it. I think if there was a draft, there would be MANY more people demanding an end to this the war occupation. I also think not much would change as far as the middle and lower classes being the one’s to end up in war zones. The privledged would still get deferments. What’s your thoughts?
In an exchange sure to send ripples of anxiety through the all-volunteer military, the Senate’s senior defense spending member asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen if it is time to “consider reinstituting the draft.”
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, asked Gates and Mullen the question he said no one wants to ask: “Is the cost of maintaining an all-volunteer force becoming unsustainable and, secondly, do we need to consider reinstituting the draft.”
Inouye cited the ever-increasing pay and benefits paid to active and reserve service members, noting that it now costs an estimated $126,000 per service member.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has written an unusual open letter to all those in uniform, warning them to stay out of politics as the nation approaches a presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be a central, and certainly divisive, issue.
“The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times and in all ways,” wrote the chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation’s highest-ranking officer. “It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway.”
Admiral Mullen’s essay appears in the coming issue of Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal that is distributed widely among the officer corps.
The essay is the first Admiral Mullen has written for the journal as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and veteran officers said they could not remember when a similar “all-hands” letter had been issued to remind military personnel to remain outside, if not above, contentious political debate.
The essay can be seen as a reflection of the deep concern among senior officers that the military, which is paying the highest price in carrying out national security policy, may be drawn into politicking this year.
The war in Iraq has already exceeded the length of World War II and is the nation’s longest conflict fought with an all-volunteer military since the Revolutionary War.
In particular, members of the Joint Chiefs have expressed worries this election year about the influence of retired officers who advise political campaigns, who have publicly called for a change in policy or who serve as television commentators on the war.
Speaking out against the war, female veterans describe regular abuse at the hands of their peers — and the military’s failure to address it.
I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know just how bad. Colonel Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army, grabbed the audience’s attention at a panel called Women in the Military, hosted last month by Women Center Stage in New York City, when she said that one in three women in the military is sexually abused by her male colleagues. Ann wants to see huge signs displaying this statistic in every recruiting office, to let young women know what to expect if they sign up.
In a rare all-military naturalization ceremony, the Pentagon will give 30 service members citizenship of the United States.
The new citizens represent the 17 countries of: Belize, Bolivia, Canada Colombia, Cuba, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Peru, and the United Kingdom.
The service members are from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, and include members of the National Guard and Reserve.
Yes, their defensive zone is the planet and they patrol it regularly. As ever, their planes and drones have been in the skies these last weeks. They struck a village in Somalia, tribal areas in Pakistan, rural areas in Afghanistan, and urban neighborhoods in Iraq. Their troops are training and advising the Iraqi army and police as well as the new Afghan army, while their Special Operations forces are planning to train Pakistan’s paramilitary Frontier Corps in that country’s wild, mountainous borderlands.
Their Vice President arrived in Baghdad not long before the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched its recent (failed) offensive against cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern oil city of Basra. To “discuss” their needs in their President’s eternal War on Terror, two of their top diplomats, a deputy secretary of state and an assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, arrived in Pakistan — to the helpless outrage of the local press — on the very day newly elected Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was being given the oath of office. (”I don’t think it is a good idea for them to be here on this particular day… right here in Islamabad, meeting with senior politicians in the new government, trying to dictate terms…” was the way Zaffar Abbas, editor of the newspaper Dawn, put it.)
At home, their politicians have nationally televised debates in which they fervently discuss just how quickly they would launch air assaults against Pakistan’s tribal areas, without permission from the Pakistani government but based on “actionable intelligence” on terrorists. Their drones cruise the skies of the world looking for terrorist suspects to — in the phrase of the hour — “take out.” Agents from their intelligence services have, these last years, roamed the planet, kidnapping terrorist suspects directly off the streets of major cities and transporting them to their own secret prisons, or those of other countries willing to employ torture methods. Their spy satellites circle the globe listening in on conversations wherever they please, while their military has divided the whole planet into “commands,” the last of which, Africom, was just formed.
“Where’s the outrage?“, the author of this article asks. I say check their bank accounts.
An Unreported Scandal
A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II. Even the devastating defense spending audit released Monday by the Government Accountability Office documenting the enormous waste in every single US advanced weapons system failed to provoke the outrage it, and five equally scathing previous annual audits, deserved. [...]
The Iraq War may end someday, but rest assured that major weapons systems, once commissioned, have a life’support system unmatched in any other sector of public spending. Rarely does the plug get pulled on even the most irrelevant and expensive war toy. Not while both Democratic and Republican politicians feed at the same trough, and when so much is at stake in the way of jobs and profit.
Bush plans to… by starting this unnecessary, illegal war, putting as many as he can in harms way, by not giving them the safety equipment they need, forcing them to stay longer than they originally agreed to, and forgetting about them once their hitch is up.
If stories like this made it into the MSM more often, maybe moms and dads would think twice before letting their children join up in such a clown organization as our Army.
Yep, today’s Army… one f*cking sick organization.
Mother Fights Army Over Son’s Death
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — Joan McDonald believes her son was a casualty of the war in Iraq, but the Army says that while he did suffer a severe head wound in a bomb blast, the cause of his death is undetermined, keeping him off the casualty list. [...]
His body was found in his barracks apartment Nov. 12, a Monday. He was last seen alive the previous Friday.
The Army ruled out suicide and accidental factors, but an autopsy could not determine the exact cause of death, in part because of the decomposition of the body, said Col. Diane Battaglia, a base spokeswoman.
As a result, McDonald’s death is considered noncombat-related, with the caveat that medical experts couldn’t rule out that “traumatic brain injury” may have been a factor, Battaglia said.
Adm. William Fallon has resigned as chief of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia after more than a year in the post, citing what he called an inaccurate perception that he is at odds with the Bush administration over Iran.
Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, was the subject of a recent Esquire magazine profile that portrayed him as resisting pressure for military action against Iran, which the Bush administration accuses of trying to develop nuclear weapons.
In a written statement, he said the article’s “disrespect for the president” and “resulting embarrassment” have become a distraction.
“Although I don’t believe there have ever been any differences about the objectives of our policy in the Central Command area of responsibility, the simple perception that there is makes it difficult for me to effectively serve America’s interests there,” he said.
Three or MORE? Is it any wonder these guys are showing signs of STRESS an mental health problems?
Soldiers with three or more combat tours show increased rates of mental health problems, in part because they aren-t getting enough dwell time between deployments, according to new data from the Army.
Results from the 2007 Mental Health Advisory Team study, which surveyed almost 2,300 soldiers returning from Iraq and nearly 700 more from Afghanistan, noted nearly 28 percent of soldiers returning from their third tour showed signs of significant stress and mental health problems.
That’s well above the roughly 18 percent rate seen in troops returning from their first or second deployment.
A soldier claimed Wednesday that his promotion was blocked because he had claimed in a lawsuit that the Army was violating his right to be an atheist.
Attorneys for Spc. Jeremy Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation refiled the federal lawsuit Wednesday in Kansas City, Kansas, and added a complaint alleging that the blocked promotion was in response to the legal action.
The suit was filed in September but dropped last month so the new allegations could be included. Among the defendants are Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Hall alleges he was denied his constitutional right to hold a meeting to discuss atheism while he was deployed in Iraq with his military police unit. He says in the new complaint that his promotion was blocked after the commander of the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley sent an e-mail post-wide saying Hall had sued.
suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S. I’m not rightwing and it makes me suspicious.
Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other’s borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.
Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.
The U.S. military’s Northern Command, however, publicized the agreement with a statement outlining how its top officer, Gen. Gene Renuart, and Canadian Lt.-Gen. Marc Dumais, head of Canada Command, signed the plan, which allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency.
The new agreement has been greeted with suspicion by the left wing in Canada and the right wing in the U.S.
The left-leaning Council of Canadians, which is campaigning against what it calls the increasing integration of the U.S. and Canadian militaries, is raising concerns about the deal.
I’m reading through the news today and come across this story at Stars & Stripes:
Sentencing has been scheduled for April 18 for Steven G. Potoski, who in December 2006 pleaded guilty to taking bribes in exchange for awarding Army contracts to build the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch, Germany.
Potoski, 47, was arrested in September 2005 after serving for seven years as director of contracting for Armed Forces Recreation Center Europe.
He later admitted in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York to accepting more than $350,000 in bribes from 15 contractors or subcontractors.
And I’m wondering to myself, what the heck is the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort and what does it have to do with the military? So I look it up and I find this:
Email QuestionGirl
WAUSAU, Wis. (AP) — Joan McDonald believes her son was a casualty of the war in Iraq, but the Army says that while he did suffer a severe head wound in a bomb blast, the cause of his death is undetermined, keeping him off the casualty list. [...]