Sunday, Nov 16th
Last update09:53:53 AM GMT
Military Glance
A recent Army inspector general's report says the process for deciding a soldier's fitness for combat is so confusing that it increases the chance of sending ailing troops to war.
They describe a climate where commanders constantly pressure soldiers with health issues to deploy, even when their medical records — which they provided — show physical problems.
Erik Roberts, an Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq, underwent his 13th surgery recently to save his right leg from amputation. Imagine his shock when he got a bill for $3,000 for his treatment.
"I put my life on the line and I was wounded in combat, and I came back and they're not going to take care of my medical bills?"
TVNL Comment: This nation has never supported the troops. Funding wars means funding war profiteers. That's all it ever meant and that is all it ever will be because war is nothing more than business.
The unmanned bombers that frequently cause unintended civilian casualties in Pakistan are a step toward an even more lethal generation of robotic hunters-killers that operate with limited, if any, human control.
The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own
More than 200 soldiers from the newly formed 1st Battalion, 138th Infantry Regiment of the Missouri Army National Guard came to Camp Clark from across the state on Saturday, March 14, to take part in training in several different combat scenarios. This is the first time Missouri has had an infantry unit in more than 35 years.
The U.S. State Department re-signed the security firm formerly known as Blackwater despite Iraq saying it didn't want the company there, records show.
The State Department said $22.2 million deal signed with Blackwater, since renamed Xe, in February was a contract modification concerning aviation work, The Washington Times first reported. The contract expires in September, months after its contract for work in Baghdad was to have run out.
One observer said the deal raises questions about why the United States would want to pay a contractor for work in Iraq if the government won't approve its operating license.
More people came forward to report sexual assaults in the military last year, but a significant percentage wouldn't give crucial details needed for an investigation.
The Pentagon said it received 2,923 reports of sexual assault across the military in the 12 months ending Sept. 30 2008. That's about a 9 percent increase over the totals reported the year before, but only a fraction of the crimes presumably being committed. Among the cases reported, only a small number went to military courts, officials acknowledged.
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