"Pentagon urged to rethink pay for active duty, reserves" by Lolita C. Baldor | Associated Press, July 03, 2012
WASHINGTON — America’s citizen soldiers, who train in their hometowns for a weekend a month and two weeks a year, receive more money for one day of training at home than their fellow National Guard and Reserve members earn for a day serving in the war zone.
Pentagon officials defended the pay discrepancy as incentive for National Guard and reservists who give up their weekends and must be ready on a moment’s notice to serve. But it is one of many problems in the Guard and Reserve compensation system detailed in a new Pentagon review that recommends changes to make the salaries and benefits more equitable across the board....
Pete Duffy, the acting legislative director for the National Guard Association of the United States, said changing or reducing pay for weekend warriors would face heavy opposition around the country.
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They must have such a feeling of helplessness.
"Pentagon’s second in charge oversees downsizing; Carter has strategy for saying ‘no’" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, July 16, 2012
WASHINGTON — Ashton B. Carter is the Pentagon’s second in command, which makes him the day-to-day manager of the world’s largest bureaucracy at a uniquely challenging time: the military is forced to downsize not in peacetime but as the world grows more unsettled.
That places Carter, 57, in very different circumstances than his predecessors two decades ago, the last time the US military was reduced significantly in size.
“The defense budget was going down and everybody could understand why and accept why — because the Soviet Union had gone away,” the former head of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Security, said in an interview. “But we are trying to manage to a lower budget at a time when the threat is not receding.
“The world hasn’t gotten any safer. It’s changing, developing; we’re facing cyber [warfare] and all kinds of new challenges.”
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A sign of Carter’s impact, say some observers, is his reportedly testy relationship with weapons manufacturers.
“Ash Carter is not popular in the defense industry, said Loren Thompson, whose consulting firm, Source Associates, advises a number of contractors. “He is the first guy in a decade who said ‘no’ when the companies wanted something.”
Carter stresses that the defense companies are “our partners” but also makes clear that their agendas are not always in sync.
In one recent speech he bluntly told executives to “look up from the foxhole” and prepare themselves for smaller budgets.
“It’d be great if we had all the money we want,” he told them. “Well, we don’t have all the money we want.”
But on at least one issue Carter and the defense industry are now in lockstep: opposition to more cuts mandated by Congress — on the order of $1.2 trillion, nearly half of which would fall on the Pentagon.
I never expected them to cut a damn thing. Long live the f***ing empire!
The across-the-board reductions, agreed to last fall as a last-ditch compromise to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, are set to take effect in January unless Congress takes action....
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"Democrats may try end-run on GOP tax vow; Would delay vote till after Bush-era tax cuts expire" by Jonathan Weisman | New York Times, July 18, 2012
WASHINGTON — Lawmakers on both sides are now lamenting the fiscal train wreck that many of them voted to create, a confluence of spending cuts and tax increases that the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said Tuesday could send the economy into recession.
At the same time, former Vice President Dick Cheney was meeting with Senate and House Republicans, in part to warn them of the dire consequences he sees in $500 billion in automatic military cuts that will begin to hit Jan. 2.
Be it Bush, Rumsfeld, or Cheney, all I can say is why were they not arrested?
Off Capitol Hill, a broad bipartisan coalition of fiscal hawks, led by the co-chairman of Obama’s 2010 fiscal commission, Erskine B. Bowles, restarted efforts to pressure Washington to reach a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction....
Numerically, Republicans and Democrats are not as far apart as the exchanges would suggest....
Tired of the s*** fooleys, folks?
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Time for me to fly, folks:
Major court-martial begins in Air Force base sex scandal
Jury gets case in Air Force abuse trial
SAN ANTONIO — An Air Force instructor was sentenced to 20 years in prison Saturday, after being convicted of rape and sexual assault in a sweeping sex scandal that rocked one of the nation’s busiest military training centers.
A military jury at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio found Staff Sergeant Luis Walker guilty Friday night on all 28 charges he faced, including rape, aggravated sexual contact, and multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault....
Five women testified during Saturday’s sentencing hearing, saying they couldn’t sleep or maintain relationships with men after the assaults. They said Walker’s actions eroded their trust in authority and affected their performance at work.
‘‘It’s gotten to where I had anger issues even at work,’’ said one, who left the military. ‘‘If anyone makes even the slightest sexual reference, I go off. I have zero self-control.’’ The other four women are still in the military.
One said it affected her tour in Afghanistan because she felt uncomfortable being alone with men.
‘‘It’s made it extremely hard to interact with authority figures,’’ she said. ‘‘During my tour in Afghanistan, I was a little bit more scared of everything. I can’t work with certain individuals just since they remind me of Staff Sergeant Walker.’’
Lackland is where every US Air Force recruit receives basic training....
About 1 in 5 recruits is female, pushed through eight weeks of basic training by a group of instructors, 90 percent of whom are men.
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Also see:
As gays serve openly, few problems for chaplains
Boy Scouts maintain exclusion of gays
New leader of gay rights group returns to Arkansas roots
Study calls for more access to PTSD therapy
Pentagon briefs House on national security leaks
"Hundreds help beautify Arlington National Cemetery" Associated Press, July 10, 2012
ARLINGTON, Va. — Hundreds of volunteers ignored cloudy skies and morning rain Monday to get their hands dirty making Arlington National Cemetery more beautiful.
Nearly 400 adults, with about 50 children, took Monday off from landscaping companies in 29 states to help beautify the grounds at the venerable cemetery.
Adults pruned and braced trees, aerated soil, and put down lime, while the children planted perennials. A local horticulturalist also was on hand to teach the children about the caterpillars and other insects they found.
Two children, Abby Bradley of Falmouth, Mass., 11, and Shelby Wanzor, 10, of Atlanta, wrote winning essays that earned them a chance to lay wreaths during a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Abby said she was inspired to volunteer by her grandfather, a late World War II Marine veteran. He would ‘‘be excited that I’m doing this for my country, and he’ll be happy for me,’’ she said.
Michelle Mercurio flew in from Jacksonville, Fla., to help fix up the cemetery for a third time. She said her husband, Timothy B. Mercurio, served as a Marine in the Gulf War. Her second cousin, Benjamin Castiglione, served with the Navy and died in Afghanistan in Sept. 3, 2009.
What was a Navy guy doing in land-locked Afghanistan?
‘‘I think that we need to do more for the military. More for the families and the fallen soldiers and the wounded warriors,’’ she said.
Oh, I agree. The government doesn't take care of veterans like it should. It's an open secret.
The beautification event was organized by the Professional Landcare Network.
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Related: Remains of airmen lost in ’65 buried
A Trip Through Arlington
Sobering, isn't it?
UPDATE: IG report praises reforms at Arlington Cemetery
And lest we forget our victims:
"Bomb database useful for past, present wars" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff, July 30, 2012
MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. —A compilation that, at the click of a mouse and a few keystrokes, reveals for the first time the sheer magnitude of destruction inflicted by the US and its allies from the air in the last century.
And they are outpacing themselves in this one.
It has been assigned a military acronym befitting its epic goal: THOR, Theater History of Operations Reports, and was previewed last month at the Air Force Research Institute here. Government experts and private researchers say the data could have far-reaching implications.
Amerikan airpower sure must have felt like the hammer of Thor to the people below.
It is already aiding efforts to spot unexploded bombs that still endanger civilians and to search for the missing aircraft and their crews of past wars. City planners in countries such as Germany, where new construction requires an assessment of the potential explosive hazards left over from World War II, have also consulted it. As a research tool, the project may even rewrite the history of some famous battles....
Isn't that forbidden?
The database, he said, has recently been used to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan and to judge claims by Iraqi villagers that bombs containing depleted uranium contaminated their water supply....
That and the birth defects have followed our litter, folks.
One particularly relevant example: From October 1965 to May 1975, at least 456,365 cluster bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, according to the records analyzed. Cluster munitions, designed to release small bomblets, often did not explode on impact and still pose a hazard to villagers.
This kind of information — including which of the 28 types of cluster bombs were used and where — has grabbed the attention of the Department of State’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, which has spent $2 billion in the last two decades helping clean up unexploded bombs and land mines in 80 countries....
The wars keep costing you in ways you never imagined, 'murkns!
Also see: One-Day Wonder: Lebanon's Cluster F***
Israel Admits It Used White Phosphorus in Gaza
Gee, I wonder where they got all that stuff, 'murkn.
Another agency taking advantage of the project is the military command searching for clues to the remains of thousands of missing pilots and air crews from past wars....
Initial analysis of THOR has raised at least one intriguing possibility in that regard: airstrikes, not tanks, may have been most responsible for the Allied breakthrough against the German Army at El Alemein in Egypt in the fall of 1942, a major turning point in the war against Nazi Germany....
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Related: Memory Hole: Willie Pete
Willie Pete War Crime in Afghanistan
The pet project could be a problem.
UPDATE:
"A dozen US service members brought women, likely prostitutes, to their hotel rooms in Colombia and also allowed dogs to soil bed linens and building grounds shortly before President Obama arrived in the country for an April summit, according to a military investigation that followed punishments for the men."
Ah, the ARROGANT Amerikan ambassadors! No wonder the world hates us.
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Secret Service Discovery
