U.S. Military Presence to Increase in Pakistan

By Courtney Costello-Talk Radio News Service

In an effort to stem the Taliban’s recent armed attacks on the Pakistani state, a coalition of Democratic Senators outlined a plan to increase military presence in Pakistan.

Following the Obama Administration aim to strengthen the region, the senators’ plan would increase U.S. military forces with 17,000 American troops primarily made up of Marines and 4,000 American military trainers. Their job would consist of training the Pakistan Armed Forces to fight the influx of insurgents in the South.

Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) had only praise for the new strategy of military leadership in Pakistan and also highlighted other initiatives of the plan.

“There is a great emphasis on not just the military work and taking down the Taliban, but also making sure the economy of the country and the people who live there have a opportunity to better security but also a better life.”

The senators found that Pakistan is united to remove the Taliban from their country.

“The Pakistan government have a brand new tone, they’re serious and they recognize that the enemy that presents a true threat to the future of their country is the insurgency”, said Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.)

Along with the increase of military force in Pakistan the senators also described bringing in 700 U.S. military helicopters to help Pakistan fight the insurgents but to also help Pakistan with maintenance of their current helicopters.

The senators who attended the Congressional Delegation (CODEL) trip included, Tom Carper (D-Del.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.).

Defense Department may be wasting your tax dollars

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a meeting to discuss weapon acquisition programs in the U.S. Department of Defense. Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said that immature weapon expenditures have led to cost inefficiencies, and cited that nearly half of DOD’s 95 acquisition programs surpassed Congress’s cost growth standards and have exceeded their budgets by an average of 40 percent. He called for an independent cost assessment director in the DOD in order to ensure that budget decisions are “fair, unbiased, and reliable.”

John Young, Jr., under secretary of the Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics said that the major causes of cost overruns and schedule delays are “unstable requirements, immature technologies, and funding instability.” He said that many factors necessary for efficiency within the department are not currently within the jurisdiction of the DOD to implement.

Katherine Schinasi of the Government Accountability Office said the DOD’s weapon acquisition systems have been on GAO’s “high risk list” since 1990 and has seen little improvement despite efforts to the contrary. She said funding has increased, but outcome has not improved. Schinasi said that the DOD has too many acquisition programs combined with inadequate oversight, which has wasted taxpayers’ money by providing less value per dollar spent. This has resulted, she said, in failure of programs to deliver equipment on time, in sufficient quantites, or with the correct tools necessary for current operations.

Getting to know the Department of Defense (Again)

By Meredith MacKenzie

I was born on Hahn AFB in Germany during the Cold War. I was baptized by an Air Force chaplain. For most of my life my father has been an F-16 Fighter pilot and my mother the most understanding and enduring of military spouses. All of my father’s friends went by names like “Fuzz,” “Mad Dog,” and “Chairman.” I have waited at an airport many times with that “Welcome Home Daddy!” sign. I understand every phrase from military life from “hurry up and wait” to the alphabet soup of TDY and the SOP and I will never forget the ROE my dad made me sign in order to get my learner’s permit.

As an Air Force brat, I thought that I understood America’s military. I mean, I come from a military family, the military helped pay for my education, my favorite college team (after my alma mater, of course) is the Fighting Falcons. But being on the ground, on base, even my own failed attempt to join AFROTC in college, could not have prepared me for getting to know the Department of Defense all over again.

As the TRNS Pentagon correspondent I had the chance over the last week to travel with the Secretary of Defense to Mexico City, Ft. Bliss, Texas, and the largest Army vehicle depot in the country at Texarkana. It was my first time traveling with a government entourage and I want to tell my fellow citizens that there is no better way to travel. I imagine that only the President or the Secretary of State travel in more style than Secretary Gates.

It was the contrast between our great accommodations (which the journalists themselves pay for) and the convenience of riding in a police escorted motorcade and the drab brown surroundings of Ft. Bliss that stuck out to me. I thought I knew what military life was about-- turns out that I know military life in an officer’s family. My family has never had to live on base, my father has never had a 15-month hardship deployment, and he certainly has never had three of them.



The bulk of America’s military are the enlisted men and women who serve in active duty. Only in the insulated rings of the Pentagon do officers outnumber enlisted. It is the enlisted soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who do the daily work of the military. By and large these are people who have not attended a four-year university. They have families which they began at a young age. They enlist and give control over their lives to an institution. Then they go to Iraq and Afghanistan and then they go back.

There are 34,000 active troops in Afghanistan and 150,000 in Iraq. The new Yankee Stadium could be filled twice with the men and women serving in theater. And this is just one part of the vastness of America’s Defense Department. The sheer size of America’s military/industrial complex is staggering. Considering the $550 billion base operating budget, the 23,000 employee population of the Pentagon and the millions of members of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, as well as their respective Reserves and National Guards; it is not too much of a stretch to believe, as one colonel told us, that the combined territory of White Sands Missile Range, Yuma Proving Grounds and Ft. Bliss is larger than Rhode Island.

We toured a factory in Texarkana that puts out one Humvee every 24 minutes. We met with a colonel responsible for transitioning over 200 wounded soldiers to their homes or new units a month. We witnessed an enlistment ceremony where 45 young people (and they were young) enlisted and another 30 soldiers reenlisted. This ceremony at Ft. Bliss occurs monthly.

Sure everything is bigger in Texas, but these are just numbers from that one post, there are more than 250 U.S. military installations all over the world. Looking at the enormous scope of the nation’s defense it is no wonder that Sec. Gates, whom the Pentagon staff refer to as simply “the Boss,” is a big picture thinker. As the local press in Texas and a class of sergeant majors at Ft. Bliss discovered, Gates is the wrong man to ask about the details of a soldier’s pension or home loans. Gates simply can’t be expected to know all those details.

Over the past few months, in hearings and press conferences about what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen has called “stress on the force,” I have felt concern about the long and repeated tours of duty. I have wondered what it does to the psyche of the young men of my high school graduating class. I have read carefully Joseph Stiglitz evaluation of a $3 trillion war. But at Ft. Bliss I met a psychologist who gave me a real idea of the cost of this war.

Dr. John E. Fortunato is the resilience and restoration program director in a prototype program at Ft. Bliss. He works with severe cases of post traumatic stress disorder, all of whom want to return to duty. Through an intensive 35 hours a week in therapy, Dr. Fortunato uses alternative medicine, psycho analysis, and biofeedback techniques to help soldiers become fit for duty. He says that it is his job to heal the wound that does not show and help these soldiers deal with the price of killing.

He told us the story of one soldier who had trouble in therapy. They pushed him and intensified therapy until finally he broke down in tears telling the hardest of his stories. What he said to the therapists, represents the real cost of this war. “No one knows,” he gasped through his tears, “No one know the price, the price you pay when you shoot a man so close his blood splashes back on your flack jacket.”

The money for the war comes from American taxpayers and their children, the decisions about funding are made in the air conditioned rooms of Congress, the war is administrated by top brass and career civil servants like Secretary Gates, the cost is estimated at $12 billion a month. But the price of this war is paid by men and women who enlist and serve in the U.S. military.

Guam faces challenges in military realignment plans

Today the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a full hearing on the Department of Defense’s plans for military build-up in Guam and its impact on the community.

Witness Rep. Madeleine Bordallo (D-GU) said that plans for “military realignments” of troops from Okinawa, Japan to Guam will increase the island’s population by approximately 30 percent, presenting “many, many challenges” to local resources including construction, waste disposal, electricity, and other infrastructure and economic concerns. Bordallo called for Memorandums of Understanding, or MOUs, between the federal and Guam governments in order to establish funding sources for necessary improvements to Guam’s infrastructure in order to accommodate the population boost. She said that with the upcoming presidential election, MOUs are crucial to establishing a “road map that we can depend on” in the face of a new administration. Bordallo urged the Senate to pass H.R. 1595, the Guam World War II Loyalty Recognition Act, saying that it would be “tremendously helpful” in not taking Guam “for granted” and preparing them to assist with national security.

Brian Lepore, a Government Accountability Office director, said that the DOD has yet to submit formal budget requests and that it faces the challenge of obtaining enough funds to complete the operation, as well as strains on the island’s infrastructure if it cannot obtain these funds and does not have a clear plan of action.

New study examines costs of PTSD

The RAND Corporation held a congressional briefing today on “Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery” in which senior social research analyst Terri Tanielian discussed the findings of RAND’s recent study on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) amongst U.S. military troops who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tanielian said the RAND study explored the dynamics of PSTD, major depression, and TBI. It examined prevalence, societal costs (including decreased productivity and loss to suicide), and gaps in care for these conditions. Tanielian said that approximately 300,000 veterans currently suffer from PTSD, and that two-year post-deployment costs vary with severity but average about $26,000 per case. She also said that members of the Army or the Marines are at higher risk for these conditions than those enlisted in the Air Force or Navy, and that Hispanics and women are also at higher risk. However, she said the most determining risk factor was combat exposure and experience. Tanielian explained that while effective treatments do exist, not enough veterans are accessing them for reasons that range from scarce availability to fears pertaining to potential career implications and confidentiality risks. Increasing the number of people who receive care, she emphasized, can not only benefit veterans but can also offset the cost of treatment per case.