Military Glance
Marine Corps Pvt. Lazzaric T. Caldwell slit his wrists and spurred a legal debate that’s consuming the Pentagon, as well as the nation’s top military appeals court.
On Tuesday, the court wrestled with the wisdom of prosecuting Caldwell after his January 2010 suicide attempt. Though Caldwell pleaded guilty, he and his attorneys now question his original plea and the broader military law that makes “self-injury” a potential criminal offense.
The questions resonate amid what Pentagon leaders have called an “epidemic” of military suicides.
In suicide epidemic, military wrestles with prosecuting troops who attempt it
Military appeals court to decide: Was Marine’s suicide attempt a crime?
Now, amid growing attention to the rash of wartime suicides, Caldwell’s troubling case will present judges with a legal dilemma balancing the dictates of military discipline against evolving notions of mental health. What happens next will shape military law and order alike.
“I just didn’t feel like I wanted to live anymore, and I feel like I couldn’t have put up with things anymore,” Caldwell told officials, court records show.
Caldwell, of Oceanside, Calif., pleaded guilty to “self injury without intent to avoid service” following the January 2010 wrist-slitting on Okinawa, Japan, but he has since reconsidered his plea. On Tuesday, the nation’s highest military appeals court is scheduled to take up his case.
CIA Director David Petraeus resigns, cites extramarital affair
CIA Director David Petraeus resigned Friday, citing an extramarital affair and "extremely poor judgment."
As first reported by NBC News and in a letter released to the CIA work force on Friday afternoon, Petraeus disclosed the affair, and wrote: "Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours."
Hearing in NC sifts evidence against Army general accused of sex-related crimes, other charges
U.S. Army prosecutors offered the first details of a rare criminal case against a general, alleging in a military hearing Monday that he committed sex-related crimes involving four female officers and a civilian.
A hearing on evidence in the case against Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair opened Monday at Fort Bragg, home to the 82nd Airborne Division. Officials said the Article 32 hearing, similar to a grand jury proceeding in civilian court, was expected to last at least two days.
Now US Navy is arming drone boats
While the US Air Force's drones have been firing all sorts of air-to-surface missiles and bombs for roughly a decade now, the Navy took a big step toward getting in on the action last week when it launched six Israeli-made Spike missiles from an unmanned 36-foot motorboat.
The Navy pretty much admits that the project — called the unmanned surface vehicle precision engagement module (USV PEM) — is aimed at defeating threats that are straight out of Iran's war plans for the Persian Gulf region.
Remote U.S. base at core of secret operations
Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base here, the combat hub for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.
Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia, the collapsed state whose border lies just 10 miles to the southeast. Most of the armed drones, however, veer north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al-Qaeda franchise that has targeted the United States.
Nearly 30% of Vets Treated by V.A. Have PTSD
The Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly released a new report on post-traumatic stress disorder, showing that since 9/11, nearly 30 percent of the 834,463 Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans treated at V.A. hospitals and clinics have been diagnosed with PTSD.
Veterans advocates say the new V.A. report is the most damning evidence yet of the profound impact multiple deployments have had on American service men and women since 9/11. Troops who’ve been deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan are more than three times as likely as soldiers with no previous deployments to screen positive for PTSD and major depression, according to a 2010 study published by the American Journal for Public Health.
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