Securing Iraq: A Pivotal Moment in Time
via SWJ
Exercising my freedom to; Guaranteed by my freedom from.
J.J. Abrams and his creative team for the new Star Trek movie wowed the audience at Comic-Con in San Diego this afternoon as they revealed a casting coup: Heroes star Zachary Quinto will be playing Spock! And, to the delight of all 6,500 in the capacity crowd, Leonard Nimoy joined Quinto on stage as Abrams confirmed the elder Spock's involvement in the new film.Transcript and Video
J.J. Abrams reveals the movie's first two stars, Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy, to a very appreciative capacity crowd.IGN interview with Matt Damon:
'Sesame Street' Deployment Show Nominated for Emmy
A television special that looks closely at challenges military Families face when a parent is deployed has been nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program.Outstanding Children's Program
Giving military members a break from their dangerous daily routines—Borgwardt’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit diffuses and disposes of improvised explosive devices, booby traps and munitions—is just what Tom Fick had in mind when he created Project Hollywood Cares.Previous: Elmo Helps Military Kids Through Deployments
There's really no excuse for this.
Some TRICARE Beneficiary Data Put At Risk
Data for nearly 600,000 households enrolled in TRICARE stored on a government-contractor's unprotected computer server could have been exposed to hackers, defense officials announced Friday.What can I do to protect myself against identity theft?
Related:There is a wealth of information available about identity theft for you and your household members at the consumer protection web sites of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Defense (DOD), and TRICARE:
These sites provide valuable information regarding identity theft prevention and steps that individuals can take should problems develop.
Monitor your credit
Common advice includes routinely monitoring your financial accounts and billing statements for suspicious activity. Credit reports contain information about you, including what accounts you have and how you pay your bills. The law requires each of the major nationwide consumer reporting agencies to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. Best practice recommends requesting a credit report every four months, rotating through the three nationwide consumer credit reporting companies with each request.To order your free annual report from one or all the national consumer reporting companies:
- Visit www.AnnualCreditReport.com
- Call toll-free 877-322-8228 or
- Complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form (40k PDF file*) (FTC web site) and mail it to:
Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA 30348-5281
An intruder gained access to a Defense Department computer server and compromised confidential health care insurance information for more than 14,000 people, the department said Friday.Reward offered in theft of medical records (January 2, 2003)
Computer hard drives containing the medical records of more than 500,000 military members were stolen last month from TriWest Health Care Alliance Corp., which administers the military's Tricare health plan in 16 midwestern and western states. The files, which contain sensitive information including patients' claims histories and Social Security numbers, disappeared from the Tricare Central Region health contractor's Phoenix offices on Dec. 14.
Perhaps over generalized, but tell me how many of the "Left" actually care to listen to DOD information? How many of the "Right" actually hear the concerns of the Left?UPDATE: Ken Silverstein, "In focusing on the blogger calls I’ve unintentionally ..."
Previous: Blackfive Schools Harpers on BloggingPentagon Holds ‘Bloggers Roundtables’ To Cater To Right-Wing Noise Machine
UPDATE: Since publishing this post, ThinkProgress has been in contact with the Pentagon, and they have agreed to allow us to participate in the bloggers roundtables.
Next month, this Commission will convene to publicly discuss our recommendations. In doing so, we must fulfill the following objectives of our charter:Commission Urges Improvements to Servicemembers' Care
- Evaluate and recommend improvments, where needed, to the transition from wounded warrior status back to military service or civilian life
- Evaluate and recommend ways to ensure access to the highest-quality service for returning wounded warriors
- Analyze the effectiveness of the process through which health care services and benefits are delivered.”
Today, the nine-member panel outlined six recommendations:
• Create comprehensive health recovery plans and develop a corps of highly trained coordinators to help servicemembers transition back to military duty or civilian life every step of the way.
• Simplify the way disabilities are determined and make the compensation system less confusing.
• Improve the system for diagnosing and treating post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries, and work to make servicemembers less vulnerable to these two signature ailments of the war on terror.
• Significantly strengthen support for Families.
• Develop "My eBenefits," a one-stop Web site and information source for servicemembers that combines Defense Department and Veterans Affairs databases.
• Keep Walter Reed staffed with first-rate professionals until it closes in 2011.
MountainRunner Movie Review: No End in Sight
This is a must see movie even if you have been paying attention. This is not Michael Moore emotional hyperbole but a factual account of failed leadership. If you haven't been paying attention, which is probably not many readers of this blog, Ferguson creates an easily digested synopsis of how America managed to create an insurgency in Iraq.Intel Dump's Phil Carter Movie Review: "No End in Sight"
Bottom line up front: go see this movie.James Fallows: 'No End in Sight': Definitely, see this movie
It covers almost exactly the same terrain, including many of the same sources and anecdotes, as did my book Blind Into Baghdad. But rarely have I seen a clearer demonstration of how much more powerful the combination of pictures, sound, music, real-people-talking, etc can be than words on a page.
This points to a serious breakdown not just on civility, but in the ability of people to properly debate various issues.Heh: "black helicopter" crowd.
Author discusses blog posting that links military service, serial killers
Well, not exactly. The current post has been changed compared to the deleted post. For example, here's what the first few paragraphs might look like if the original post was modified using Rebecca Blood's guidelines:The blogosphere is going crazy today over a posting at the liberal Daily Kos entitled: "Killitary: How America's Armed Forces Create Serial Killers and Mass Murderers."
The posting was removed from the blog at some point after it was published Thursday night. (It also appears to have been removed from the author's personal blog. Here's the cached version.)
A cached version of the Daily Kos posting is available through Google....
Update at 1:40 p.m. ET: The posting is back on the In Cold Blog.
Friday, July 20, 2007The rest of the post is similar to the deleted one until the conclusion, where a sentence and two paragraphs have also been added:KILLITARY:
How America's Armed Forces Create Serial Killers and Mass MurderersAre America's Armed Forces Creating Serial Killers and Mass Murderers?[Update: I decided to repost this after being excoriated by both left- and right-wing blogs. After speaking with various military personnel who read this post they assured me that it is very obvious and clear what I was getting at. The military trains people to kill and some of our men and women return home and don't receive the proper care to deal with the horrors of war or even the intensity of training. Not a single one of them thought I was trying to smear the soldiers or call them serial killers. They thanked me for pointing out a serious problem that gets overlooked by the military and needs to be dealt with.]
[Update: This article in no way is meant to suggest that all mil[i]tary members will become serial killers or mass murderers. It does point out a serious problem with what is happening in our armed forces and seeks a solution to help the brave men and women on their return back home.]
According to the July 30, 2007 issue of The Nation magazine, damning photos of a U.S. Soldier using a spoon to literally scoop out the brains of a dead Iraqi and pretending to eat the gray matter were recently acquired.Of course, everyone is appropriately appalled and make all claims of disgust and finger-wagging. Research shows, however, that such unacceptable behavior happens more often than the United States military wants you to know.
When it comes to training killing machines, the military really does create "an Army of one."
The list of serial killers and mass murderersborne fromwho have spent time in the military is astounding....
The author, Corey Mitchell, also told USA Today's On Deadline blog:Here Are a Few More Not So Good Men:All served in the military. All went on to become serial killers, mass murderers, or assassins. [Update: Others were already killers who became even worse after their time in the service.
Of course, the number who become serial killers or mass murderers compared to the rest of the hundreds of thousands of troops who do not is minimal. But isn't one serial killer one too many?]
John Allen Muhammad ("The Beltway Sniper"), Arthur Shawcross, Lee Harvey Oswald, Randy Kraft, Dennis Rader ("BTK"), Howard Unruh, Robert Lee Yates, Gary Heidnik, Charles Cullen, Charles Ng, Henry Louis Wallace, Julian Knight, Courtney Mathews & David Housler, Daryl Keith Holton, Wayne Adam Ford, Richard Marc Evonitz, etc.This list is by no means comprehensive and does not include military personnel who murdered their families, loved ones, or friends upon their return from training to kill or war.
[Update: This article in no way is meant to suggest that all mil[i]tary members will become serial killers or mass murderers. It does point out a serious problem with what is happening in our armed forces and seeks a solution to help the brave men and women on their return back home.]
Mitchell says he may decide to republish the piece on his blog, but is weighing the effect of all the negative attention on his wife, who works on a military base, and their young daughter. "I have to weigh my family's stress level versus how necessary is it to have that piece up," he writes in a follow-up e-mail.Apparently, Mitchell decided it was necessary ... with some modifications. The modifications came from being "excoriated by both left- and right-wing blogs."
Blackfive starts with Ken Silverstein's conclusion:
Before these bloggers start to complain that they’ve done nothing wrong, I’d like to ask how they would feel if a group of handpicked, administration-friendly liberal bloggers had done the same thing during the Clinton years. I believe they would have objected vociferously–and I would have agreed with them. No one, on any side, should let themselves be used to spread the administration’s gospel. At least not anyone who can pretend to journalistic standards.Journalistic standards?
Department of Defense New Media TeamI don't see the conspiracy Silverstein sees, but then I wasn't impressed by the hype-debunking in MoJo's Politics 2.0, either.
Phone: 703-325-0103
Email: bloggeroutreach-at-hq.afis.osd.mil
Danger Room notes that OSD approved their request to add two progressive milbloggers to the roundtables in under half an hour.See, Ken? How hard was that?
But how hard is it, really, to get other critical voices added to the conference call list?I am a fan of both Jason Sigger and Matt Armstrong and have linked to them in the past. They will make great additions to the bloggers' roundtables and Ken looks even more foolish than he first did.Well, it took exactly 23 minutes to get Jason "Armchair Generalist" Sigger and Matt "Mountain Runner" Armstrong signed up. And neither is what you would call a fan of this administration.
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