Eideard

Medical aid in the snow — does it matter which war?

The Army has removed the head of the Madigan Army Medical Center in Washington state during an investigation into whether soldiers had diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder reversed to reduce medical costs.

“This is a common practice during ongoing investigations and nothing more,” Maj. Gen. Phillip Volpe, who heads the Western Region Medical Command, said Monday about the removal of Col. Dallas Homas.

Homas is a West Point graduate whose career has included deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served as command surgeon. His military honors include two Bronze Stars…

The focus of the Army Medical Command investigation is a Madigan forensic psychiatric team that has the lead role in screening soldiers being considered for medical retirement due to PTSD, a condition that results from experiencing or seeing a traumatic event, such as a battlefield casualty.

Symptoms can include recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, irritability and feeling distant from other people. Soldiers diagnosed with PTSD gain at least a 50 percent rating of disability, and qualify for pensions, family health insurance and other financial benefits.

In 2011, an ombudsman investigated complaints from soldiers who said the forensic psychiatric team had reversed earlier diagnoses of PTSD and tagged some of them as possible malingerers.

The ombudsman also wrote a memo about a lecture in which a member of the forensic psychiatric team talked about the need to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and not rubber stamp PTSD diagnoses that could result in a soldier earning $1.5 million in benefits over a lifetime…

I didn’t know there was a specific field of psychiatric study dedicated to oversight by beancounters.

The ombudsman investigation resulted in more than a dozen soldiers getting a chance for a second PTSD screening by doctors from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C.

Fourteen of those soldiers will have the results of their Walter Reed reviews detailed in individual meetings at Madigan with Col. Rebecca Porter, chief of behavioral health, Office of the U.S. Army Surgeon General.

One would hope the analysis reverts to psychiatric concerns rather than saving the budget.

But, I shall never forget the times he woke in the middle of the night and rolled under his bed because he thought there was incoming artillery fire – and that he was back in Bastogne in the winter of 1944-45.

Nanjing Massacre Museum
Daylife/Reuters Pictures

The Chinese city of Nanjing has suspended its sister-city relationship with Nagoya, Japan, after Nagoya’s mayor expressed doubts that the Japanese Army’s 1937 Nanjing Massacre actually took place…

The falling out began Monday, when Nagoya’s mayor, Takashi Kawamura, told a visiting delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials from Nanjing that he doubted that Japanese troops had massacred Chinese civilians. Most historians say that at a minimum, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered in Nanjing in one of the most infamous atrocities of Japan’s military expansion across Asia in the early 20th century.

The falling out underscored how differing views of history remain a problem in Japan’s ties with the nations that it once conquered. While such denials are common by Japanese conservatives like Mr. Kawamura, they are rarely raised in such a public manner, or directly to Chinese officials…

Still, the Japanese government scrambled to head off a full-blown diplomatic quarrel. The top government spokesman restated Japan’s official position that the massacre did, in fact, take place…

On Wednesday, Mr. Kawamura remained unrepentant, saying that he did not intend to retract the statement or apologize…

Such disagreements between Japan and its neighbors have quieted from the early 2000s, when Junichiro Koizumi, then prime minister, angered many in China and South Korea by visiting the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo that honors Japan’s war dead, included executed war criminals.

I’ve written about this before. People in China haven’t forgotten. Why should I?

About 2,000 Afghans protested outside the main US military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday over a report that foreign soldiers improperly disposed of copies of the Koran. US helicopters fired flares to try to break up as many as 2,000 demonstrators who massed outside several gates to the base, chanting anti-foreigner slogans and throwing stones.

Roshna Khalid, the provincial governor’s spokeswoman, said copies of the Muslim holy book had been burnt inside Bagram airbase, an hour’s drive north of the capital Kabul, citing accounts from local labourers.

“The labourers normally take the garbage outside and they found the remains of Korans” Khalid said. Nato’s top general in Afghanistan attempted to contain fury over the incident, which could be a public relations disaster for the US military as it tries to pacify the country ahead of the withdrawal of foreign combat troops in 2014.

“When we learned of these actions, we immediately intervened and stopped them. The materials recovered will be properly handled by appropriate religious authorities,” said general John Allen, head of the International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF). “This was NOT intentional in any way…”

Is this general an idiot? Is every officer in his command an obedient puppet idiot? Every military force in the West has a book to go by. And doing it “by the book” while stationed abroad is how you do it. Believe me – there already are rules and regulations governing everything from how and why the military acquired copies of the Koran – how they were used by the military – and what was appropriate when that use was completed.

Bagram also houses a prison for Afghans detained by US forces. The centre has caused resentment among Afghans because of reports of torture and ill-treatment of suspected Taliban prisoners, with president Hamid Karzai demanding the transfer of prisoners to Afghan security.

Winning the hearts and minds of Afghans is critical to US efforts to defeating the Taliban but critics say Western forces often fail to grasp Afghanistan’s religious and cultural sensitivities.

American-led forces often fail to grasp the religious and cultural sensitivities of anyone whose kin weren’t on the losing side of the American Civil War. Much less lands outside the territorial boundaries of the 50 states. It doesn’t have to be that way.

There is no shortage of bright, inquisitive, studious, able folks who have joined our military in recent decades. They’re dedicated to bringing our military and our politics into the 21st Century. They just don’t happen to be in charge of a whole helluva lot.

Anti-Nazi demonstrators in Germany prevented far-right groups from marking the 67th-anniversary of the RAF bombing of Dresden by forming a human chain in the city centre. An estimated 13,000 people from across Germany’s political spectrum took part in the stance against the far right despite freezing conditions.

The anniversary of the Dresden raid has been a high point in Germany’s neo-Nazi calendar with thousands rallying in the eastern German city each year despite passionate, and at times violent, opposition from critics, who accused the far right of exploiting the bombing for political purposes.

An estimated 25,000 people died in the raid that started when RAF bombers struck on the night of February 13, 1945 and finished with an attack by US aircraft on February 15.

The colossal loss of life and tremendous destruction wrought by the bombing of a city famed for its culture and architecture has been portrayed by the German far right as an Allied war crime and an example of Germany’s apparent victimhood.

Some 1,600 neo-Nazis travelled to Dresden to mark the raid this year but were met at the station by a police presence of over 5,000, and some 2,000 counter-demonstrators who banged drums and shouted “Nazis out”.

The far right started a torch-light procession but were soon told by police they would have to abandon it because the human chain had blocked their route…

“I’m happy that it remained peaceful,” said Markus Ulbig, interior minister for state of Saxony. “Democrats have come together to show that Nazis are not welcome in the city.” After the far-right threat had passed, people lit candles in memory of the victims of the raid and attended a memorial service. At 21:45, the time RAF bombers first appeared over Dresden, church bells rang out across the city.

“Our city stands together for courage, respect and tolerance,” said the Dirk Hilbert, Dresden’s acting mayor, in an address to the anti-Nazi demonstrators.

I find it very hard to express my hatred of war and those who glorify it. I am blinded by tears of anger and pain – I cannot hold back my rage.

They changed their mind, withdrew the offer.

A thin man rests his head on the shoulder of a burqa-clad woman, the pair collapsed together against a wall. The expression on her face can’t be seen. But her body language – right arm wrapped tightly around his neck, left hand clinging to his arm – conveys everything her expression cannot.

This is Samuel Aranda’s World Press Photo of the Year, which Mr. Aranda shot in Yemen while on assignment for The New York Times last fall.

The image, which has the mood of a Renaissance painting, was one of the first Mr. Aranda filed from Yemen, where he spent more than two months shooting for the paper. He found the pair at the entrance to a mosque that had been converted into a hospital.

“I got back to my place and I saw the photo in the screen and I was like, ‘Wow,’” Mr. Aranda said. “The woman is not just crying. It was something more. You can feel that the woman is really strong…”

Mr. Aranda, 32, was born in Spain and is based in Tunisia. When he arrived in Yemen in early October, no one knew he was there. It had taken him more than a month to safely sneak into the country.

He fell in love with the place.

Still, it was a couple of weeks before he felt comfortable walking around with a camera. While covering protests in Taiz, he and a freelance reporter for The Times came under fire from government soldiers. As the only Western photographer in Yemen at one point, Mr. Aranda was helped by friendly local wire photographers – like Mohamed al-Sayaghi of Reuters.

That made it difficult to leave, which he did just before Christmas. “I remember saying ‘bye’ to Mohamed and he was super serious, looking at me, and he was like, ‘We have a big problem,’” — “’You cannot leave the country now.’”

Koyo Kouoh, another juror, said Mr. Aranda’s photo speaks for the events that swept the region in 2011. “It stands for Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, for all that happened in the Arab Spring,” Ms. Kouoh said.

It’s no surprise to see other photos from the uprisings on the list of winners, which can be seen on the World Press Photo Web site. Alex Majoli won first prize in the general news singles category for a photograph of protesters in Tahrir square reacting to a speech by the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February. Rémi Ochlik was awarded the prize for general news stories for “Battle for Libya.” And Yuri Kozyrev‘s photograph of Libyan rebels in Ras Lanuf won first prize in spot news singles.

Bravo to you all. For your skill, humanity and bravery.

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground…

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can’t talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress…

In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.

As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan…

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on…

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members…

RTFA. Follow Colonel Davis’ relation of what he saw and has reported – both in classified detail to Congress and the Pentagon and unclassified open publication. The following is the final statement made by ARMED FORCES JOURNAL which published this report.

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start. AFJ

Former prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp return on Holocaust Remembrance Day

Click here for the series of photos published by the Telegraph.

K-Max prototype

We may be closer to the day when United States Marines will, within a matter of minutes, use a handheld app to summon robotic helicopters to deliver battlefield supplies. On Tuesday, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced its five-year, US$98 million Autonomous Aerial Cargo Utility System (AACUS) program, with the specific aim of developing “sensors and control technologies for robotic vertical take-off and landing aircraft.”

ONR’s chief of naval research, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, describes AACUS as a “leap-ahead technology” which eliminates the need for a skilled operator while maintaining “the central and critical role of the human operator as the supervisor.” If it comes to fruition, AACUS would constitute an evolutionary step beyond the unmanned, remote control variant of the K-MAX helicopter, which flew its first unmanned combat missions in December.

Though sometimes described as semi-autonomous, the unmanned K-MAX requires a skilled operator within light-of-sight to be able to delivery its payload (so it’s not autonomous at all). AACUS, by contrast, would be a robot in the truest sense, taking off, planning, and navigating a flight path “with little to no input from an operator.”

“It’s going to be designed to work with people who have no flight experience,” said AACUS program officer Dr. Mary Cummings. “An operator will pick up his iPad or Android and make an emergency supply request. He’ll request that the helicopter come to him and land as close to him as possible.”

As I noted at the Gizmag site, an equally important use would be battlefield extraction of troops cut-off from any possibility of retreat on foot.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta cautioned global rivals on Sunday not to misjudge U.S. plans to slash military spending over the next decade, saying America would still field the world’s strongest military and nobody should “mess with that…”

Pressed on whether the United States could take out Iran’s nuclear sites without using nuclear weapons, Dempsey would only say: “I absolutely want them to believe that that’s the case…”

The tough talk comes days after President Barack Obama unveiled a new military strategy that calls for a smaller force as the United States cuts $487 billion in projected defense spending over the next decade in an effort to deal with the nation’s $14 trillion debt…

Dempsey said he worried that some countries might misunderstand the debate Americans are having over changing strategy and the need to cut defense spending…”There may be some around the world who see us as a nation in decline, and worse, as a military in decline. And nothing could be further from the truth,” Dempsey said…

Panetta said U.S. rivals should not misunderstand the situation…”I think the message that the world needs to understand is: America is the strongest military power and we intend to remain the strongest military power and nobody ought to mess with that,” he said…

Congress missed a deadline for reaching a compromise that could have stopped the new defense cuts, but it could still take action to override the spending reductions before they are due to go into force next year.

Obama, in unveiling the new defense strategy at a Pentagon news conference on Thursday, noted that even with the $487 trillion in cuts to projected spending, the defense budget would continue to grow in nominal terms.

He also said the U.S. defense budget would still be by far the world’s largest – roughly the size of the 10 next-biggest defense budgets combined.

Phew. I was worried the retired generals and admirals infesting the infrastructure of the military-industrial complex might be forced to make do on their pensions.

BTW – don’t you love it when the “peacemakers” we elected can’t help but brag to the rest of the world how easily we can kill and destroy everyone?