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By Robert Cohen
$27.96
By Scott D. Sampson
$19.77
$40
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Six U.N. peacekeepers from the Spanish army were killed Sunday when their vehicle was attacked with an explosive device. Condoleezza Rice, her French and Spanish counterparts and even Hezbollah have all condemned the attack. No one has claimed responsibility. Tensions have been high in Lebanon with Lebanese forces battling an extremist militant group for over a month.
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motherjones.com
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Truthdig contributor Reese Erlich connects the blowback from American meddling in the Mideast to the recent violence in Lebanon, where a Palestinian militant group has been fighting with the Lebanese army.
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anxietyinsights.info
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The Army plans to hire roughly 200 additional mental health workers to help care for ailing soldiers. Thirty-five percent of troops seek mental health care a year after coming home and between 15 and 20 percent of soldiers in Iraq show signs of post-traumatic stress. The latest Pentagon study found military mental health care to be inadequate.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A video has surfaced that shows what appears to be the identifications cards of two missing American soldiers. The Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni insurgent coalition, has claimed responsibility for the capture of three soldiers, one of whom was later found dead.
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Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi revealed Monday that his government is planning for a rapid pullout of American forces: “The army plans on the basis of a worst-case scenario so as not to allow any security vacuum. ... There are meetings with political leaders on how we can deal with a sudden pullout.”
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tcsdaily.com
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The House of Representatives wants to boost soldier pay by 3.5 percent in order to close the gap with private sector wages, but the White House opposes an increase beyond 3 percent. The White House has also come out against new benefits for disabled veterans and survivors of military retirees.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Prince Harry eagerly wanted to deploy to Iraq with his fellow soldiers, but the head of the British army has said the risks to the prince and those serving around him would be “unacceptable.”
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An Army survey of troops in Iraq has found some disturbing attitudes, and recommends shorter deployments for the mentally exhausted soldiers. Asked whether civilians should be treated with dignity and respect, less than half said yes and more than a third found torture acceptable.
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The Army’s new chief of staff, Gen. George Casey (of Iraq fame), has said he can’t guarantee that deployments won’t grow beyond the current 15 months. Casey was asked about the extensions by a frustrated Army wife who said her husband’s deployments have more than doubled in length over the years.
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The House Oversight Committee has sent requests to the White House and Pentagon asking for all documents related to the death of Pat Tillman. The committee is investigating why the Army misrepresented the circumstances of the Ranger’s death. Key to that effort is a letter sent by a top general urging Gen. John Abizaid to warn the White House.
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The American commander in charge of Baghdad’s Camp Cropper, which holds about 3,300 detainees, has been arrested by U.S. forces for a range of alleged offenses. Lt. Col. William Steele stands accused of providing a phone to detainees, having an inappropriate relationship with both an interpreter and a detainee’s daughter and mishandling classified information, among other charges.
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AP Photo / Mark Wilson, Pool
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Jumana Musa, advocacy director for domestic human rights and international justice at Amnesty International, speaks with Truthdig about the war on human rights, why conditions at Guantanamo have only gotten worse and why she has hope for the future.
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“I was ordered not to tell them,” testified U.S. Army Spc. Bryan O’Neal on Tuesday. According to the AP, the Army Ranger was instructed by a superior to conceal information about the friendly-fire incident from Pat’s brother and fellow Army Ranger Kevin Tillman on threat of punishment.
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Why did we lower flags to half-mast for students and faculty killed in the Virginia Tech shootings but do not do the same for our fallen soldiers in the Middle East? That’s the provocative question posed by Sgt. Jim Wilt from his Army outpost near Kabul, Afghanistan.
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From documents already released, it has become clear that the Army acted inappropriately following the death of Pat Tillman, destroying evidence, instituting an “information lockdown” and possibly even discussing a PR strategy. Congress will now investigate the matter, with the aid of uncensored documents and testimony from the Tillman family.
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Jim Lehrer reports that the Army may be underestimating the severity of disabilities, denying servicemen and -women lifetime benefits. The Veterans Disability Benefits Commission found that disability ratings made by the Veterans Affairs Department were typically higher than those of the Army.
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AP Photo / Darko Vojinovic
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Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Wednesday that the Pentagon is likely to extend the tours of duty of some 100,000 soldiers currently deployed in Iraq by three months. The new policy would enable the surge to last for a year.
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The military has concluded that the fratricide of Pat Tillman was not criminal and there was no broad cover-up, despite recommending action against officers who, as the AP reports, “passed along misleading and inaccurate information and delayed reporting their belief that Tillman was killed by his fellow soldiers.”
Posted on Mar 26, 2007
READ MORE 
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By Stan Goff — Last week’s leak that nine officers will be implicated in the cover-up of the circumstances of Pat Tillman’s death unleashed yet another wave of commentary and speculation about the nature of his patriotism and service. Stan Goff takes on one particularly ferocious vulture in order to defend Tillman’s memory.
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Army Surgeon General Kevin C. Kiley has resigned, the third military official to lose his job in the Walter Reed scandal. An anonymous defense official says Kiley was asked to step down by the acting Army secretary, who got his job only two weeks ago after another abrupt dismissal.
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playboy.com
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Pvt. Jacob Burgoyne was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and ordered to a psychiatric facility, but the Army sent him home instead. Shortly thereafter, Burgoyne stabbed a fellow soldier 32 times and set his body aflame because, he said, “that’s how we disposed of bodies in Iraq.”
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aljazeera.net
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Eight Iraqi soldiers were killed and six wounded on Friday, Iraqi officials reported, after an American helicopter mistook them for an al-Qaida cell and opened fire. The U.S. military, which says only five were killed, expressed its “deepest sympathies” for the friendly-fire deaths.
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This week, our collection of Truthdig-flavored videos includes Sen. Jim Webb’s response to Bush’s SOTU speech; a misleading U.S. Army recruiting video; and an episode of “30 Days” that puts a conservative Christian in a Muslim household.
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This deceptive commercial for the U.S. Army implies that reservists won’t be called up into active service in the near future. Kudos to AMERICAblog for posting this.
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The Pentagon will no longer limit the time a soldier can spend fighting on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military can now cycle the same troops indefinitely in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, where soldiers previously could not serve more than 24 cumulative months.
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washingtonpost.com
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Carolyn Ho has gone to Washington to fight on behalf of her son, Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse to go to Iraq. Watada faces court-martial and six years in military prison for abstaining from a war he believes is illegal.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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An Iraq war veteran who appeared in “Fahrenheit 9/11” has lost his lawsuit against Michael Moore. Sgt. Peter Damon, who lost his arms in Iraq, had accused Moore of misrepresenting his feelings about the war by using an interview from NBC News out of context.
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cnn.com
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Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command and the military chief of the Iraq fiasco, will retire in March. Though officials say Abizaid tendered his retirement before Rumsfeld was pushed out, his departure will allow Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush more flexibility in their Iraq makeover, as Abizaid has been a dogged opponent of increasing troop levels.
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richardsilverstein.com
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President Bush has instructed Defense Secretary Robert Gates to provide a plan for increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps. A major increase would take years to achieve and would not alleviate problems associated with the White House’s plan to “surge” troop levels in Iraq.
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newmediamusings.com
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Truthdig contributor Marc Cooper, writing for The Nation, uncovers a growing movement of active-duty soldiers who are petitioning Congress to begin the withdrawal of troops. A 21-year-old soldier serving in Iraq who signed the petition says of the war: “The well is so poisoned by what we have done here that nothing can fix it.”
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DoD Photo / R.D. Ward
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Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker has testified that his force “will break” without an increase in troops and greater ability to draw on Army National Guard and Reserve units. The general cited the strain of commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he told reporters: “We would not surge [in Iraq] without a purpose. And that purpose should be measurable.”
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pageoneq.com
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The Pentagon is expected to recommend expanding both the military and its presence in Iraq as part of its “double down” strategy. Another element of the plan, to be presented to President Bush on Wednesday, is likely to include a direct confrontation with Moqtada al-Sadr and his militia.
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A military watchdog group is accusing senior officers of coercing soldiers and airmen into adopting evangelical Christianity—as demonstrated in a promotional video the senior officers appeared in. “We apparently have a radicalized, evangelical Christian Pentagon within the rest of the Pentagon,” says the head of the watchdog group.
Read about it here and here
Watch the video here
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freewebs.com/jesseburyj/
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Peggy Buryj was told in 2004 that her son Jesse died near Karbala, Iraq, sustaining a back injury while heroically defending an Army checkpoint. She would later learn that he was shot in the back. While the Army, which has destroyed important evidence related to the case, insists a Polish soldier fired the shot, a friend of Jesse’s who served with him told his mother an American soldier was to blame. (h/t: Buzzflash)
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“The Simpsons” takes a shot at the unsavory tactics of Army recruiters, always on the lookout for new blood to fight in “America’s next unresolvable conflict.”
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ABC News caught Army recruiters on tape misleading undercover students. While some of the recruiters were straightforward and honest, others suggested the Iraq war was over and that dropping out of the military was a simple matter. (Video & Transcript)
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Kyle Snyder fled to Canada when the Army threatened to send him back to Iraq, where he says he had been made to perform duties for which he was not trained. Snyder’s lawyer says the Army had agreed to discharge his client if he came home but now intends to return him to his original unit.
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AP
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The U.S. Army has concluded that it gave wrong or misleading information to the families of seven dead soldiers, including Pat Tillman, above. One step it’s taking to improve its notification process: “an $800,000 training film that highlights how grieving families react.”
Eight hundred thousand dollars. That’s not a typo.
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Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV expressed concern Thursday over the failure of the military’s new Baghdad strategy to curb mounting levels of violence in the city: “In Baghdad alone, we’ve seen a 22% increase in attacks during the first three weeks of Ramadan, as compared to the three weeks preceding Ramadan.”
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Pinch yourself. This is actual good news about the U.S. military in Iraq: The Army and Marines are finishing work on a new doctrine that puts the welfare and protection of civilians front and center, while minimizing the use of force.
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