By Derek Turner
Published: September 11, 2012
On a day for looking back, here's Stars and Stripes' front page from Sept. 12, 2001, bearing an iconic image and the simple words "U.S. attacked."
And here's Newseum's gallery of Sept. 12 front pages from across the country.
By Chris Carroll
Published: September 10, 2012
WASHINGTON – “No Easy Day,” the memoir by a former SEAL that the Pentagon says reveals classified information, won’t be sold in exchanges on Navy or Marine Corps bases either, representatives from both services said Monday.
On Friday, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, or AAFES, had announced a similar decision.
By Chris Carroll
Published: September 7, 2012
WASHINGTON – Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley, the first National Guard chief to wear four stars and sit among the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Friday, handing his responsibilities to Army Gen. Frank Grass in a Pentagon ceremony.
In McKinley’s four years as chief, the National Guard completed a transition from a strategic reserve to a fully integrated part of the operational military, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said.
By Chris Carroll
Published: September 6, 2012
WASHINGTON – The rising number of attacks by Afghan forces on international troops is as much a problem for Afghanistan as it is for the U.S.-led NATO coalition and demands a coordinated response, the war’s top commander, Gen. John Allen, said in a statement released Thursday.
“This is not simply a Green on Blue problem; it is a threat to both Green and Blue that requires a Green and Blue solution,” Allen said in a written statement from Kabul.
By Chris Carroll
Published: September 5, 2012
WASHINGTON – The United States will help the Afghan government recheck the entire 352,000-member Afghan security force in the wake of an upsurge of attacks against international troops by Afghans in uniform, the No. 2 U.S. general in the country said Wednesday.
“We’re going back through, along with our partners up here at [the Afghan interior and defense ministries,] a lot of information out there to try to pull together patterns,” said Lt. Gen. James Terry, commander of ISAF Joint Command.
By Chris Carroll
Published: September 4, 2012
WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will travel to Pennsylvania on Monday to commemorate victims of the 9/11 attacks who died when terrorists crashed their plane into a field near Shanksville.
The day after touring the Flight 93 National Memorial, Panetta will participate in two 9/11 events scheduled at the Pentagon: a morning observance to be held at the Pentagon Memorial, and one for all servicemembers and civilian Pentagon employees in the Pentagon courtyard in the afternoon, Pentagon officials said.
By Jennifer Hlad
Published: August 28, 2012
WASHINGTON — Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos rejected the suggestion that three Marines involved in a video that showed troops urinating on the bodies of dead insurgents got off easy by not facing court-martial.
“It wasn’t a slap on the wrist,” Amos told a crowd at the National Press Club in Washington.
By Leo Shane III
Published: August 21, 2012
WASHINGTON – For the first time ever, officials from the Transportation Security Administration aren’t allowed to fire or reassign reservists simply because they’ve been called up for military duty.
When the agency was established following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it was exempt from a number of hiring and employment fairness laws in an effort to speed up its launch. That means that even though TSA agents have been a fixture at airports for more than a decade, the agency has never been subject to the Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act, which guarantees guardsmen and reservists their civilian jobs when they are activated for military service.
By Derek Turner
Published: August 15, 2012
At least two nominations for servicemembers deserving of the Medal of Honor are inexplicably bogged down in the bureaucratic pipeline, Rep. Duncan Hunter said in a letter this week to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Hunter, a California Republican and a combat veteran, reiterated his support for awarding the medal to Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta and to express concern that a Medal of Honor for Army Capt. Will Swenson may have been scuttled because Swenson questioned the rules of engagement following the 2009 battle of Ganjgal.
By Jennifer Hlad
Published: August 14, 2012
Surge troops may be starting to return from Afghanistan, but Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wants to make sure Americans remember the war’s not over yet.
“I realize that there are a lot of other things going on in this country that can draw our attention,” Panetta said Tuesday in a Pentagon press briefing, “but I thought it was important to remind the American people that there is a war going on in Afghanistan, and that young men and women are dying in order to try to protect this country.”