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 . '/' . substr('9780871404107',-6,3) . '/' . '9780871404107' . '.jpg'; ?>)
Edited by Peter Davison
$39.95
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By Lopez Lomong and Mark Tabb
$24.99
$21
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U.S. Army / PFC Ali Hargis
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One of the most criticized decisions made by the U.S. back in 2003 when it stumbled into Iraq like a drunk Mel Gibson at a bar mitzvah was the disbanding of the Iraqi army. All these years later, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is reinstating 20,000 of Saddam Hussein’s officers. (continued)
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Flickr / jamesdale10 (CC-BY)
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The Senate Armed Services Committee is investigating a Blackwater subsidiary’s role in the shooting of two Afghans last year. The panel also criticized the Army for not properly supervising the company. Despite a dreadful track record, Blackwater, now called Xe, continues to have contracts with the U.S. government.
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U.S. Army / D. Myles Cullen
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Although other military leaders have expressed their support for a moratorium on the infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding American gay and lesbian troops, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. Army chief of staff, expressed reservations to senators on Tuesday about changing the law in wartime.
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Wikimedia Commons / The White House
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai has tepidly announced he is pondering introducing conscription in order to build a domestic army and police force capable of taking over security operations from NATO troops in his war-torn country.
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DoD / MC1 Chad J. McNeeley
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Only Congress can overturn the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but the military may unilaterally make it harder to enforce—or at least hold up its end of the deal by actually not asking. The Pentagon will reportedly stop acting on accusations of homosexuality by third-party snitches and gay-baiters and will disempower anyone but generals and admirals to discharge people. Update
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AP / Rodolfo Gonzalez
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An Army review of November’s shooting spree at Fort Hood has found the military’s defenses against internal threats to be “outdated and ineffective.” It describes systemic institutional problems that go beyond the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man accused in the shootings.
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AP / Ivan Sekretarev
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Russian President (and Vladimir Putin stand-in) Dmitry Medvedev announced in a televised speech Thursday that his country would develop a new generation of nuclear weapons that would replace the old Cold War-era missiles that stock his arsenal.
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stewart.army.mil
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Remember when protecting women’s rights was given as a justification for invading countries? Well, the U.S. general in northern Iraq has added pregnancy to the reasons why a soldier could be court-martialed—a list that includes selling weapons and taking drugs.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Despite profound ideological differences and a long history of fighting between the groups, the two largest Colombian guerrilla armies, the ELN and the FARC, have forged a pact to fight the country’s security forces.
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nato.int
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Germany’s top soldier, army chief Wolfgang Schneiderhan, has resigned over accusations of a cover-up after officials withheld information about a NATO airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Afghanistan.
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AP / David Guttenfelder
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By Chris Hedges — American military commanders measure progress by the swelling size of the Afghan army, although the force is said to be poorly trained, sympathetic to the Taliban and the scourge of local populations.
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news.yahoo.com
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With a new populist government in place in Tokyo, the people of Okinawa are stepping up their protest against the relocation of a U.S. Marine Corps air base on the island. They want the base gone altogether.
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weblo.com
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On Thursday afternoon, two gunmen in military uniforms opened fire in a processing center at the U.S. Army’s Fort Hood base in Texas, killing 12 people and wounding at least 31. According to The New York Times, the alleged shooters were U.S. Army soldiers but had not been identified yet. Updated
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AP / John Froschauer
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Lt. Ehren Watada, the soldier who refused to deploy to Iraq on grounds that serving there would be participating in war crimes, is finally free of the Army. His court-martial ended in a mistrial and the military decided to let Watada go.
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nature.com
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After almost 30 years since HIV surfaced in the United States, researchers in Thailand and the U.S. have created an experimental vaccine that has, over a seven-year study, been found to reduce the risk of contracting HIV by one-third. The vaccine is a combination of two existing vaccinations that were not successful in reducing infection.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Stacy L. Pearsall
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Women make up just 13 percent of the Army, but one of them now oversees the training of every single drill sergeant. That means she also oversees, by extension, the training of every single soldier.
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By David Sirota — The military’s fantastical advertisements promote a somewhat comforting, if disturbingly misleading, message—and it is aimed not just at potential soldiers, but also at the public at large.
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DoD / R. D. Ward
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Those wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking their toll. To cope with rising demand, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he will increase the size of the Army by 22,000 troops for a period of three years. That means there will be 569,000 active-duty soldiers, bringing America’s active-duty armed forces close to 1.5 million.
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By Amy Goodman — The first coup d’etat in Central America in more than a quarter-century occurred last Sunday in Honduras. It was led by a graduate of the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, a military facility that has trained some of Latin America’s worst torturers, murderers and human rights abusers.
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The anti-Proposition 8 protests were one form of gay rights activism taking place recently around Los Angeles, but a related issue was the subject of a rally led by former Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Arab linguist who was discharged from the Army National Guard earlier this month for coming out publicly: Choi wanted to remind the visiting president about his pledge to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini
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President Obama is expected to order 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 17,000 previously announced and 38,000 already there. This latest batch of personnel is reported to be departing in June with a mission to train Afghan forces.
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Flickr / kikasso
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Some Israeli soldiers have accused military rabbis of pushing holy war in Gaza. “This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness,” said a reserve sergeant quoted by the L.A. Times.
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By William Pfaff — Except for the brief NATO intervention in Kosovo and Serbia, all of the significant U.S. military expeditions since the Cold War have been fought against Asians, and we have lost nearly all of them.
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By William Pfaff — Exactly what do we think we are doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Are we there to liberalize their forms of religious observance, or conduct a war over theology, or establish permanent NATO bases there, or are we searching for Osama bin Laden? It seems that we are doing all of these things at the same time. But why?
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news.sky.com
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Adding to the solemn string of record-breaking statistics, new figures show that the suicide rate among U.S. Army members has hit its highest level in three decades. Last year, over 128 soldiers took their own lives, a telling sign of our military and political climate.
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By William Pfaff — NATO has no coherent overall purpose and has not had one since the end of the Cold War. Any number of redefinitions and reorganizations have been proposed or tried and have proved unsatisfactory because no one can explain what it is that NATO really does or is for, other than to clean up behind the United States.
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AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner
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By Chris Hedges — The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel’s callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers.
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Maan Images / Mohamed Al-Zanon
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About 1,300 Palestinians dead, $2 billion in damage and thousands of devastated families later, Israel claims it has officially pulled its troops from the Gaza Strip after its three-week assault—with no formal deal between Israel and Hamas and thus no real change in relations between the two sides.
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guardian.co.uk
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Following accusations by human rights groups last week, Israel has finally admitted that its troops “may have used” white phosphorus shells—a chemical agent that wreaks havoc on the skin—in contravention of international law.
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U.S. Army / Sgt. Whitney Houston
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Here’s what Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s top talker, had to say about whether the next president would work to end the military’s policy of discrimination against gay service members: “You don’t hear politicians give a one-word answer much. But it’s ‘Yes.’ ”
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un.org / unrwa
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The United Nations is suspending relief activity in the Gaza Strip following multiple attacks by Israeli forces. “Our installations have been hit, our workers have been killed in spite of the fact that the Israeli authorities have the co-ordinates of our facilities and that all our movements are co-ordinated with the Israeli army,” said a U.N. Relief and Works Agency spokesman quoted by the BBC.
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By Eugene Robinson — President-elect Obama will have more urgent matters to deal with after he takes the oath of office. But somewhere on his long to-do list, he should make a note to finally bring five decades of counterproductive American policy toward Cuba to a definitive end.
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AP photo / Musa Khan
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In a rebuke to U.S. interests in the region and amid growing tensions between two nuclear powers, Pakistan is moving its forces from its border with Afghanistan—where Pakistani troops are fighting against the Taliban—and restricting soldiers from going on leave, as fears of conflict with India continue to grow.
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kenyon.edu
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A new study mirroring the infamous 1963 Milgram experiment has suggested that humans will still follow authority’s beckon, even to the point of killing another person. The new report, timely considering the current debate around torture in the U.S., argues that it’s not that humans are bad, but that “a massive social influence [is] going on.”
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U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Michael Bracken
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An American living in Kandahar writes in The Washington Post that the “corrupt gunslingers” the U.S. put in charge of Afghanistan are as much to blame for the resurgence of the Taliban as anyone. “Why,” after all, “would anyone defend officials who pillage them?”
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Flickr
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The Thai army is debating whether or not to intervene in a political standoff it helped launch some two years ago when it ousted then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Opponents of both Thaksin and the current PM have seized and shut down Bangkok’s two airports, a devastating blow to a country dependent on tourism.
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U.S. Army / Spc. Richard DelVecchio
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To the great relief of U.S. military commanders, Iraq’s cabinet approved an agreement that would provide a legal basis for the occupation beyond Dec. 31. The deal, which still must clear a vote in parliament, maintains partial immunity for U.S. soldiers and calls for the withdrawal of American forces by 2011. Update
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Two new books resurrect the seductions and corruptions of pre-revolutionary Cuba.
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By Amy Goodman — If the economy does collapse, if people can’t go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious “civil unrest,” and the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with “crowd control.”
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A new book by Brenda Wineapple sheds light on the little-known relationship of the reclusive genius poet with one of America’s most fervent radicals.
Posted on Sep 11, 2008
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AP photo / William B. Plowman
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By Col. Ann Wright — Since I posted on April 28 the article “Is There an Army Cover Up of the Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers,” the deaths of two more U.S. Army women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been listed as suicides—the Sept. 28, 2007, death of 30-year-old Spc. Ciara Durkin and the Feb. 22, 2008, death of 25-year-old Spc. Keisha Morgan. Both “suicides” are disputed by the families of the women.
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By Amy Goodman — With no end in sight in Afghanistan and Iraq, military recruiters must be prevented from using desperate and aggressive measures to lure our nation’s young people—the poorest and most vulnerable—into the line of fire.
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Friends’ and relatives’ memories of microbiologist Bruce E. Ivins, who apparently committed suicide last week as he became a top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, differ greatly from the image of him invoked by the stories that have emerged about his threatening behavior in recent months.
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marinecorpstimes.com
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By Col. Ann Wright — There was quite a struggle in Congress this week [July 27-Aug. 2]. The Department of Defense refused to allow the senior civilian in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office to testify in Thursday’s hearing on sexual assault in the military. Above, Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who reported being raped in 2007 and whose body was found buried in a backyard in 2008.
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Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation —
Today’s shocking revelation about the apparent suicide of an Army microbiologist, a lead suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, has intensified the need for a thorough investigation into the only significant bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil, said Alan Pearson, director of the biological and chemical weapons control program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
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