By Seth Robson / Stars and Stripes While the Army has been working to gauge the mental health toll of multiple deployments on soldiers, some Army leaders and spouses say the service is moving too slowly to address similar effects on military family members. Spouses face day-to-day pressure while soldiers are away and very little is […]

By The Associated Press The head of U.S. Central Command warned Friday that the thousands of American troops surging into Afghanistan’s turbulent Helmand province to battle the Taliban are in for a tough fight. Gen. David Petraeus, best known for coordinating the troop surge in Iraq that is credited with reducing that country’s violence, cautioned […]

By Gregg Zoroya / USA TODAY After seven years of war, most children of combat troops are showing more fear, anxiety and behavioral problems, according to the Pentagon’s most sweeping survey of the effects of war on military children. Six out of 10 U.S. military parents told researchers their children have increased levels of fear […]

By Thom Shanker / The New York Times The new American commander in Afghanistan has ordered a 60-day review of the entire military mission to identify better ways to separate the population from insurgents, an assessment that is expected to lead to new economic and military steps to carve fighters off from the Taliban. Over […]

By Noah Shachtman / Wired The Army has ordered its network managers to give soldiers access to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, Danger Room has learned. That move reverses a years-long trend of blocking the web 2.0 locales on military networks. Army public affairs managers have worked hard to share the service’s […]

By Lolita C. Baldor / Associated Press All but a few dozen of the 16,000 Marines now in Iraq will be out by next spring, the Marine Corps commandant said Thursday, putting a solid end date on a long-anticipated exit. Gen. James T. Conway said his Marine commanders are already moving equipment out of Anbar […]

By Golnar Motevalli / Reuters The majority of the 17,000 extra U.S. troops being sent to fight a growing Taliban-led insurgency in southern and western Afghanistan should be on the ground by mid-July, the U.S. military said on Sunday. A further 4,000 troops are arriving to train Afghan security forces and they will be deployed […]

From the Associated Press: The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the […]

This is a great idea! Pillowcases for kids with pictures of their deployed parents on them. Admittedly, I made Paul a pillowcase with a picture of me sleeping on it when he deployed. (Yes, so we could still sleep together. Sigh.) But I never thought of doing it the other way around! See the original […]

I was interviewed for Memorial Day on the website Betty Confidential about what it’s like to have a deployed spouse. Check out the article here!