Closet Veterans

 

The Washington Post is observing Veterans Day with a story previewing the Pentagon report on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy:

“More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, said two sources familiar with the document. The survey results led the report’s authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them.”

– “Sources: Pentagon group finds there is minimal risk to lifting gay ban during war,” Ed O’Keefe and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post.

The chief authors of the study are Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and the Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, General Carter Ham.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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U.S. Army Attack iPads

The U.S. Army wants to buy a half-million-dollars-worth of Apple iPads. Which command? Fort Knox, naturally.

Mark Malseed and Jenifer Reinhardt tell all at OhMyGov.com

 

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Senate Fails to Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

A motion to debate a defense bill which containing a measure repealing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy failed in the Senate on Tuesday.  Arkansas Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor joined the Republican filibuster. Several Republicans claim they might eventually vote to end DADT but want to hear the results of a Pentagon review of the policy, due on or about December first, too late to realistically allow for further Senate consideration.

 As Igor Volsky points out, 70 percent of Americans favor repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” while the 42 senators stalling the bill represent only 36 percent of the U.S. population.

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Sarah Palin, Mother of Our Nation

Former Alaska Temp-Governor Sarah Palin, whose five children include professional unwed teen mother Bristol and infantryman Track, faced Fox News fans at the Lincoln Memorial today and proclaimed:

“I’ve been asked to speak as the mother of a soldier, and I’m proud of that distinction. You know, say what you want to say about me but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me.”

“No woman gives birth thinking she will hand over her child to her country, but that’s what mothers have done from ancient days.”

Mrs. Palin: Thank you for your cervix.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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U.S. Funds Afghan Warlords

A new Congressional report outlines U.S. protection payoffs to Afghan warlords. Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan was just issued by the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, chaired by Rep. John Tierney (D, MA-6). The subcommittee will hold hearings on the topic today.

Truck convoys supply Forward Operating Bases throughout Afghanistan under DOD’s $2 billion Host Nation Trucking (HNT) program, and the contractors are responsible for providing their own security. They end up “hiring” the warlords and insurgents who would be prone to attacking them.

D-Day’s Matchbox Fleet

 

(Re-posted from June 6, 2009)

Sixty wood-hulled boats made in Brooklyn were carried across the North Atlantic to England on the decks of Liberty Ships sixty-six years ago. The cutters, each 83 feet long, were designed for anti-submarine patrol and coastal search and escort, but had been modifed as rescue craft.

The group of small wooden gasoline-powered cutters, vulnerable to incendiary shells, was called the ”Matchbox Fleet.”  On June 6, 1944, these boats crossed the Channel as U.S. Coast Guard Rescue Flotilla One, part of Operation Neptune/Overlord.

Bullet Points

– “‘PowerPoint makes us stupid,’ Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

‘It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,’ General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. ‘Some problems in the world are not bullet[point]-izable.’”

“We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint,” Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times. 

Anthropologists in Afghanistan

The U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System (HTS) program surfaced on Bob Edwards’ radio program this weekend. The HTS sends anthropologists to Afghanistan in order to minimize cultural misunderstandings between the U.S. military and Afghanis. Three social scientists have died in the effort.

While it sounds noble and straightforward, the program is controversial within academia for ethical reasons, and questions have been raised concerning the capabilities of the HTS leadership. 

The Marines also utilize HTS scientists, and there is a film about the program.  Vanessa M. Gezari  reported on the Human Terrain System last summer (more here).

 

Image by Mike Licht.

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Veteran’s Day 2009

This is Veterans Day in the United States. It was once called Armistice Day, marking the time the guns stopped in The Great War, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. When that failed to be The War to End All Wars, the observance was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

This year the holiday is marked by the launch of a new web site for vets, Today’s G.I. Bill, a guide to education benefits for post-9/11 veterans that is more user-friendly than the Department of Veterans Affairs or active-duty military sites. The project is supported by the Lumina Foundation and the American Council on Education.

While implementation of the education benefit is not without problems, it has been more successful than other vet programs. 131,000 U.S. veterans will be homeless tonight. 5.5 million vets are living with a disability. Up to 35% of Iraq veterans experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). You can help. Look here to find out how.

 

Hat tip: Inside Higher Ed

Hear and read the stories of veterans in their own words at the website of Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center.

Image: Lumina Foundation.

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Weekend Demonstrations in DC

It was a typical 3-day weekend in Washington, DC. Thousands gathered to march, run, and demonstrate for an end to breast cancer, the Knights of Columbus got out the feathered hats and laid a wreath at the foot of a statue no one notices in front of Union Station, Metrorail celebrated Columbus Day by closing stations for track work, local protesters demanded a better NFL team, and thousands of gays and lesbians marched on the Capitol to demand marriage equality and the right to serve in the military.