Saturday, Nov 15th
Last update02:32:12 AM GMT
Military News Archive
A U.N. torture investigator says he is frustrated at being denied an unmonitored visit to a U.S. Army private suspected of giving classified material to WikiLeaks. Juan Mendez says the U.S. government "has not been receptive to a confidential meeting" with Pfc. Bradley Manning.
With the stress of ongoing combat in three nations now roiling the military, Capitol Hill lawmakers are concerned that America's armed forces might be facing yet another strain — getting high.
Two longtime senators on Wednesday made their case that synthetic marijuana is taking an especially heavy toll on troops — and they urged the military to play a bigger role in getting the problem under control.
In a letter last week to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the drugs "pose a risk to the operational readiness of our armed forces."
The cliche notwithstanding, there are atheists in foxholes.
In fact, atheists, agnostics, humanists and other assorted skeptics from the Army's Fort Bragg have formed an organization they hope will be a pioneering effort to ensure fair treatment and win recognition for nonbelievers in the overwhelmingly Christian U.S. military.
"We exist, we're here, we're normal," said Sgt. Justin Griffith, chief organizer of Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, or MASH. "We're also in foxholes. That's a big one, right there."
An Army effort to reduce suicides by sharing more of soldiers' personal therapy information with squad, platoon or company leaders — even in cases where there is no threat of self-harm — is pushing the limit of privacy laws, say civilian experts on medical records restrictions.
Soldiers may be discouraged from seeking care if they fear their privacy will be violated, says Mark Botts, an associate professor of public law at the University of North Carolina who specializes in the privacy of behavioral health records.
The Army's recent announcement that another infant had mysteriously died while living in post housing at Fort Bragg was especially eerie to Pearline Sculley, like a bookend to her own tragic story.
The latest death was a boy, 4-1/2 months old, with no obvious illness, who seemed fine one minute on the morning of Feb. 24 and not breathing the next. Sculley's own son, Jaden Willis, was 2-1/2 months old when he died suddenly on the same date in 2007. She still doesn't why.
Instead of keeping watch itself, the Department of Defense today relies on contractors to monitor the work of other contractors, a risk strategy that became cemented during the Iraq War thanks to a politically-connected-and powerful-company with ties to the Bush White House.
In late 2004, the U.S. Army command overseeing logistical support for troops in Iraq had a serious problem on its hands. Army officials had hired KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney had helped lead, to supply soldiers with food and other supplies. But at least $1 billion in billing by KBR was questioned by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency, resulting in the Army deciding to withhold 15% of its payments to KBR.
A 22-year-old U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Wednesday to the murders of three Afghan civilians, telling a military judge "the plan was to kill people" in his coordinated conspiracy with four fellow soldiers.
Spc. Jeremy Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, was court-martialed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle, where he pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, and one count each of conspiracy, obstructing justice and illegal drug use in exchange for a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison.
For nearly three years, the military held the key to Roger House's exoneration and didn't tell him: A forensics examiner had botched a crucial lab test used in the Navy lieutenant's court-martial. In fact, the military had begun second-guessing a decade's worth of tests conducted by its one-time star lab analyst, Phillip Mills.
Investigators discovered that Mills had cut corners and even falsified reports in one case. He found DNA where it didn't exist, and failed to find it where it did. His mistakes may have let the guilty go free while the innocent, such as House, were convicted.
The suicide rate for female soldiers triples when they go to war, according to the first round of preliminary data from an Army study. The findings, released to USA TODAY this week, show that the suicide rate rises from five per 100,000 to 15 per 100,000 among female soldiers at war.
Scientists are not sure why but say they will look into whether women feel isolated in a male-dominated war zone or suffer greater anxieties about leaving behind children and other loved ones. Even so, the suicide risk for female soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan is still lower than for men serving next to them, the $50 million study says.
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