Department Of Defense U S

Marine Cpl. James Dixon was wounded twice in Iraq -- by a roadside bomb and a land mine. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, a concussion, a dislocated hip and hearing loss. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Army Sgt. Lori Meshell shattered a hip and crushed her back and knees while diving for cover during a mortar attack in Iraq. She has undergone a hip replacement and knee reconstruction and needs at least three more surgeries.

Congress is set to allow the Pentagon to keep new pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors from the public, a move intended to end a legal fight over the photographs' release that has reached the Supreme Court. Federal courts have rejected the government's arguments against the release of 21 color photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans. The Obama administration believes that giving the Defense secretary the imminent grant of authority over the release of such pictures would short-circuit a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. The White House is asking the justices to put off consideration of the case until after a vote on the measure in the House and Senate, as early as this week.

All 23 American prisoners of war captured by Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm, including two U.S. servicewomen, were tortured or abused by their captors, a top Defense Department official told U.S. lawmakers Thursday. In several instances, Iraqi interrogators broke bones, perforated eardrums and threatened to shoot or dismember the American prisoners in their custody, Army Col. Bill Jordan said in testimony before Congress' Human Rights Caucus.

A nurse rocked him awake as pale dawn light crept into the room. "C'mon now, c'mon," the nurse murmured. "Time to get up." Reggie Lane was once a hulking man of 260 pounds. Friends called him "Big Dad." Now, he weighed less than 200 pounds and his brain was severely damaged. He groaned angry, wordless cries. The nurse moved fast. Two bursts of deodorant spray under each useless arm. Then he dressed Lane and used a mechanical arm to hoist him into a wheelchair. He wheeled Big Dad down a hallway and parked the chair in a beige dining room, in front of a picture window.

When Thomas "Pete" Ray's B-26 bomber was shot down by Cuban antiaircraft batteries near Playa Giron on April 19, 1961, he wasn't there. So said the CIA. And for decades, the U.S. government publicly denied that a top-secret squadron of civilians recruited from the Alabama Air National Guard ever existed, let alone was on a CIA mission to bomb Cuba in one of the agency's best-kept and most humiliating secrets.

The Pentagon said Thursday that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant dirigible that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, providing unblinking and intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below. "It is absolutely revolutionary," Werner J.A. Dahm, chief scientist for the Air Force, said of the proposed unmanned airship -- describing it as a cross between a satellite and a spy plane. The 450-foot-long craft would give the U.S.

Senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread electronic attack on Defense Department computers that may have originated in Russia -- an incursion that posed unusual concern among commanders and raised potential implications for national security. Defense officials would not describe the extent of damage inflicted on military networks. But they said that the attack struck hard at networks within U.S.

Soldiers of American Indian descent will be permitted to use the hallucinogenic plant peyote in religious services under a draft rule proposed by the Pentagon. The rule would apply to more than 9,200 service members who belong to the Native American Church, who until now have been subject to court-martial or lesser punishment for what they describe as the sacred sacrament of a 10,000-year-old faith.

The Pentagon is about to embark on a sweeping reorganization of the Naval Investigative Service, the largely civilian Navy law-enforcement arm that was accused by the Defense Department on Thursday of botching the investigation of the Tailhook affair.

Congress is set to allow the Pentagon to keep new pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors from the public, a move intended to end a legal fight over the photographs' release that has reached the Supreme Court. Federal courts have rejected the government's arguments against the release of 21 color photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans. The Obama administration believes that giving the Defense secretary the imminent grant of authority over the release of such pictures would short-circuit a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. The White House is asking the justices to put off consideration of the case until after a vote on the measure in the House and Senate, as early as this week.

House Democratic leaders said Monday that they would not force the Pentagon to buy four new passenger jets used to ferry senior government officials. Democrats have been criticized for adding $330 million to the Air Force's 2010 budget to buy the jets, even though the Pentagon didn't request the money. Two of the planes would be the C-37 -- the military equivalent to the fancy Gulfstream G550 -- and cost taxpayers $130 million at a time when lawmakers have made villains of bailed-out auto executives who rely on corporate jets to travel.

Far from the prestigious windowed offices on the outer ring of the Pentagon, a new war room focusing entirely on the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan sits deep inside a cavernous basement. Created by Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell is intended to bring together the Pentagon's top strategy and intelligence experts. The cell is also a visible symbol of how much the related conflicts have become Mullen's war.

In a blow to Boeing Co.'s defense business, the Pentagon on Tuesday said it was curtailing plans to develop a new generation of weapons and computer technologies for the U.S. Army. The Army's biggest development program, dubbed Future Combat Systems, or FCS, was initially projected to cost $160 billion. But the Pentagon said it was canceling a major component of the program to develop new manned vehicles at a cost of $87 billion.

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House, as was the practice during the Bush administration. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.

In a carefully orchestrated campaign, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates appears poised to push through what many consider a historic remaking of the military with relative ease, averting an expected battle royal with contractors and lawmakers. "It really looks like he has played his cards well on this," said Todd Harrison, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.

The Pentagon spent more than $100 million in the last six months responding to and repairing damage from cyber attacks and other computer network problems, military leaders said Tuesday. Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, said the military was only beginning to track the costs, which are triggered by daily attacks against networks at the Pentagon and military bases around the country.

While the Pentagon has acknowledged that 15,000 mostly Army soldiers in Iraq may have been exposed to deadly nerve gas when the U.S. destroyed an ammunition dump in the Gulf War's wake, Marines stationed almost 100 miles downwind are now saying they too were contaminated. Some Marine veterans from Orange County and elsewhere in Southern California said their believed exposure to chemical agents may in fact be linked to an Iraqi Scud missile explosion over Jubail, Saudi Arabia, on Jan.

The Pentagon on Wednesday issued new rules on personal relationships that will outlaw many Army romances and end some friendships, while upholding controversial sanctions against adultery throughout the services. After 13 months of contentious deliberations, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen ordered the Army to adopt the tougher line of the other services on "fraternization"--improper relationships between officers and enlisted personnel.

The Pentagon said Thursday that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant dirigible that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, providing unblinking and intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below. "It is absolutely revolutionary," Werner J.A. Dahm, chief scientist for the Air Force, said of the proposed unmanned airship -- describing it as a cross between a satellite and a spy plane. The 450-foot-long craft would give the U.S.

The country's top uniformed officer said Monday that the Defense Department should be ready to tell civilian leaders when military force is not the best response -- and be prepared to transfer resources to other agencies during times of crisis. Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, previously has made the case for nonmilitary solutions to world problems, but his comments Monday were his most forceful to date on the subject.