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Military
Problems persist at Arlington National Cemetery
Mark Benjamin of Salon.com reports on problems plaguing Arlington National Cemetery. The cemetery’s deputy superintendent, Thurman Higginbotham, has been at the center of an Army investigation involving an illegal wiretap. The grounds of the cemetery have suffered under his direction as well. “One of Higginbotham’s failures, say employees, has been his inability to rectify disturbing…
Read MoreCivilian contractors must fight for care from insurers
“Civilian workers who suffered devastating injuries while supporting the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home to a grinding battle for basic medical care, artificial limbs, psychological counseling and other services,” according to a joint investigation by ABC News, the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica. The report says serious claims are routinely…
Read MoreArmy charity holding onto millions of dollars
The biggest charity inside the U.S. military has been stockpiling tens of millions of dollars meant to help put returning fighters back on their feet, an Associated Press investigation shows. Between 2003 and 2007, Army Emergency Relief grew into a $345 million behemoth. During those years, the charity packed away $117 million into its own…
Read MoreSalon.com launches series examining Army suicides
Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna of Salon.com have launched “Coming Home,” a weeklong series that “focuses on preventable deaths at Fort Carson, a U.S. Army post in Colorado, among troops who have returned from combat tours in Iraq.” The series comes soon after the U.S. Army announced that January showed the highest soldier suicide rate…
Read MoreOfficial confirms detainee was tortured
In an interview with The Washington Post‘s Bob Woodward, the official overseeing U.S. military commissions confirmed that treatment of a Guantanamo Bay detainee qualified as torture. “The public record of the Guantánamo interrogation of the detainee, Mohammed al-Qahtani, has long included what officials labeled abusive techniques, including exposure to extreme temperatures and isolation, but the…
Read MoreAviation accidents on the rise in U.S. Army
Over the past decade, there has been a marked increase in the number of Army aviation accidents, according to a report by Michael Fabey of Aviation Week. In the first year of the Bush administration’s “global war on terror,” fatalities increased by 875 percent — from 8 in 2000 to 78 in 2001. This trend…
Read MoreMcCaffrey profits from the business of war
A report by David Barstow of The New York Times reveals how Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general, has parlayed his stature and influence into lucrative opportunities, including a consultancy for a military contractor interested in supplying forces in Iraq with armored vehicles. Since 9/11, McCaffrey has “made nearly 1,000 appearances on NBC and…
Read MoreThe taking of NASA’s secrets
BusinessWeek’s Keith Epstein and Ben Elgin disclose detailed evidence that hackers and foreign operatives have been penetrating NASA computers for years, robbing the nation’s military and scientific institutions — along with the defense industry that serves them — of secret information on satellites, rocket engines, launch systems, and even the Space Shuttle. As part of…
Read MoreSoldiers say they were ordered to shred sensitive files
In October, Mark Benjamin of Salon.com questioned the U.S. Army’s report attributing the deaths of Pfc. Albert Nelson and Pfc. Robert Suarez to enemy action after finding evidence suggesting that the men died from friendly fire. Now three soldiers say they were ordered to shred boxes of documents containing private information about Nelson and Suarez…
Read MoreCost of Army aviation accidents top $16 billion
An analysis of data from the Army Combat Readiness/Safety Center revealed that aviation accidents and incidents have cost the U.S. Army approximately $16.2 billion over the past 12 years, according to Michael Fabey of Aviation Week. The most expensive single-event accident cost the Army about $62.4 million, but the average cost per accident or incident…
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