An event that hasn’t happened since World War II is making history in Indiana as an Indiana National Guard combat division is deployed to Afghanistan. A send off ceremony was held Tuesday for the 38th Infantry Division “Task Force Cyclone” at the division’s headquarters in Columbus. It’s the first combat deployment from the headquarters in […]

I read a great editorial today on the need for military leaders to admit suffering from PTSD. (It’s pasted at the end of this post.) As you can guess, this is an issue that I have a deep connection to. When we were together, I used to celebrate every time Paul got promoted. Every time […]

By Greg Jaffe & Karen DeYoung / Washington Post Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that the Afghan security forces will have to be far larger than currently planned if President Obama’s strategy for winning the war is to succeed, according to senior military officials. Such an expansion […]

By Barbara S. Rothschild / Courier-Post After the fireworks of July Fourth, South Jersey was the setting for a very special parade on Sunday. To celebrate the recent return of New Jersey National Guard members who had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan — the largest deployment of the state National Guard since World War […]

Fifteen hundred members of the Vermont Army Guard have finally gotten the official notice:  They’ll deploy to Afghanistan early next year.  Their mission is to train Afghan security forces.  They’ll be part of the 10,000 soldier Task Force Phoenix, commanded by Colonel Will Roy of the Vermont Guard. Read original story here

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 […]

Here’s a post by Sarah Gilbert, who’s husband is an Army reservist deployed to Afghanistan. She writes honestly about how the financial windfall associated with a deployment helped her family. You can read the original story here. I don’t know whether it was minutes or hours or even a day: the time it took me […]

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 Keith Eldridge / KOMO news Thousands of soldiers are are getting ready to head overseas as a part of the Army base’s largest deployment since the Korean War. The 5th Stryker brigade will head to Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama’s troop surge, and additional troops will deploy to Iraq. By fall,18,000 troops […]

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 […]