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Is the Army National Guard a dead end?

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

Speaking of uniforms, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden will be giving his up in July. He's not going anywhere, though. Hayden is going to continue in his job in a civilian capacity. The four-star Air Force general says he's making the shift due to "practical considerations related to military retirement."

Remember the item about the Air Force's move to require its air reserve technicians (who technically are civilian federal employees, but must join the reserves as a condition of their employment) to wear military uniforms on the job? Officials at the American Federation of Government Employees, who represent the technicians, were not happy about the move, and now they've taken action. AFGE has filed an official complaint challenging the policy.

“We are arguing that the regulation regarding the uniforms is capricious and contrary to law,” said Eugene Fidell, an attorney handling the case on behalf of AFGE. “A civilian employee cannot be required to wear a military uniform. Requiring ARTs to wear military dress while serving in their civilian capacity improperly upsets settled expectations and confuses military and civilian status.”

It's not exactly news that the Defense Department can't get its financial house in order. Still, this piece from Portfolio is a pretty damning indictment of the slow pace of improvements on this front.

Almost a decade ago, Government Executive was reporting that the Pentagon was making progress in financial reform. Four years ago we listed Defense among the agencies said to be on brink of a financial breakthrough. As recently as last fall, Defense comptroller Tina Jonas insisted that the department's financial management was better than perceived. It would be nice if the Pentagon bean-counters could clear the hurdle of being able to produce a clean financial statement, if only because of the symbolic value such an achievement would have.

Take your mind back to the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the throes of the Cold War. Suppose somebody would've told you then that you'd live to see the day that a Finnish band called the Leningrad Cowboys would perform live with the Red Army Choir in Russia -- and that they'd be singing "Sweet Home Alabama."

Here's the YouTube proof:

(Hat tip: Russia Blog, via Danger Room.)

Lying about serving in the Marines for 25 years and winning the Congressional Medal of Honor is contemptible. And it also may be criminal, the New York Times reports today.

Legal columnist Adam Liptak describes the case of Xavier Alvarez, an elected member of the board of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in California. After describing his fictitious service and honors at a board meeting, Alvarez was charged with violating the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a federal law that makes it a crime to lie about receiving certain military medals.

Alvarez is claiming the First Amendment protects his deception. He's drawing some support for that position among constitutional lawyers, but, it seems, little or no sympathy for the actions that got him in the position he's in.

American troops are generating a lot of trash in Iraq. Now, the military is hoping to use some of it as a fuel source. The Associated Press reports that the Army is sending two 4-ton biomass refineries to the country. A ton of garbage can run one of the refineries for 20 hours, generating enough power to light a small village. Assuming the biomass machines actually work in the extreme heat and dust of Iraq, that should result in reduced need for diesel fuel to run conventional generators.

Apparently Hillary Clinton wants to hire more federal employees to guard U.S. personnel and bases in Iraq -- a lot more. She has cosponsored legislation that would ban the use of private security contractors in the country and require that "all personnel at any U.S. diplomatic or consular mission in Iraq be provided security services only by federal government personnel."

But as Robert Brodsky pointed out in Government Executive in December, there are limited options when it comes to bringing all protective services in-house -- and they're expensive.

I had hoped that this maybe was a joke, even though it appeared in the New York Times. Because it's very hard for me to believe, first, that there's actually going to be a sequel to the 2004 stoner flick Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. But there is, and it -- I swear I'm not making this up -- is called Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

The Pentagon is pushing President Bush's proposal to provide federal hiring preferences for spouses of military service members. Kathleen Ott of the Pentagon’s Office of Civilian Personnel Policy has met with officials at the Office of Personnel Management to discuss the concept, Army Times reports.

The Defense Department already has a spousal preference program in place for its civilian jobs. One reason that Pentagon officials want to extend it to the rest of government is that military spouses must move frequently, and "often do not have a portable occupation which they can take with them,” Ott said. But the civilian federal government has offices all over the world.

Implementing the new hiring preferences across government probably will require legislative action, and it's unclear at this point when or if that might happen.

Looks like this is the week for music-themed posts. The Washington Post's "Government Inc." blogger, Robert O'Harrow, notes today that the Defense Department has issued a contract solicitation for a "rock music band" to tour in Kuwait and Afghanistan. But just being great at Guitar Hero or Rock Band on your Playstation won't cut it. At least one member of the band, according to the solicitation, must be a "professional celebrity."

This is not the first time, of course, that the military has issued contracts seeking musicians to entertain the troops.

If you weren't among the hundreds of people who participated in our webinar yesterday featuring the Pentagon's Mary Lacey talking about the implementation of the National Security Personnel System, you can still go in and view the archived version. It was a lively event, and timely, too, since the Defense Department just issued performance-based raises to thousands of employees under the new system.

Area 51 in New Mexico Nevada, home to a super-secret Air Force installation, has a new and rather mundane name. Air Force Times reports that civilian aviation journals now list the air base near a dry lake bed as "Homey Airport." New flight planning software also lists the designation "KXTA" for the facility -- which, the newspaper reported, "online wags have speculated stands for 'extraterrestrial airport.' "

Capt. Jessica Martin, a spokeswoman for Nellis Air Force Base, which has control over Homey Airport, told Air Force Times, “we already know about the designation, but it doesn’t have any effect on operations at the base.”

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

It's no surprise that the Defense Department is interested in power in many different forms. But it may come as some surprise that one of those forms is "wearable power." In fact, the department is sponsoring a competition for wearable power systems, defined as those that can "power military equipment for 96 hours, but that weigh less than half the current battery load." The contest will take place next September and October at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., and the winner will take home a $1 million prize. But competition is stiff -- 169 teams already have registered for the contest.

Editors and reporters at Stars and Stripes newspaper are taking on their overseers at the Pentagon, the New York Times reports today. At issue is funding for a publicity program called America Supports You that apparently was funded through the paper.

The paper's two top editors are seeking the release of more details on the contracting arrangement. “This is not how an editorially independent newspaper should conduct itself,” executive editor Robb Grindstaff and managing editor Doug Clawson wrote in a letter to the paper's publisher and the Pentagon official who oversees its operations.

Stars and Stripes occupies an unusual position in that by statute it is deemed to be editorially independent of the Defense Department, but it is owned and partially financed by the Pentagon.

Last week the Office of Management and Budget crowed about meeting a deadline to create a publicly accessible Web site to provide data on federal contracts, grants, and loans. The fine print of that announcement noted that the data would cover about 90 percent of federal spending.

So what's in the other 10 percent? That's what we're starting to learn. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists reports that several defense intelligence agencies have successfully made the case that they should not have to report even unclassified contracting actions to the database due to "operational security isues."

Defense News, Aftergood notes, uncovered a memo from Shay D. Assad, director of Defense procurement and acquisition policy, granting the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and Counterintelligence Field Activity a waiver from reporting requirements, at least for fiscal 2007 and 2008.

"I appreciate your concerns that reporting these actions to the publicly accessible website could provide unacceptable risk of insight to your individual missions and budgets," Assad wrote.

But as Aftergood notes, contracting data from these agencies for previous years will be available on OMB's USAspending.gov site. It's also been available online via other sources for years. So it's a little odd that this information suddenly represents a security risk.

(Hat tip: Government Inc.)

Congress wants the intelligence community to take a fresh look at its use of contractors. The Washington Post reports that the conference report on the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill orders National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell to prepare a report by the end of March on use of contractors at all 16 intelligence agencies.

On top of that, the legislation gives McConnell the unusual authority to increase personnel levels at those agencies (but by no more than 10 percent) in order to convert contractor jobs into government positions.

The conference report takes note of an estimate that a civilian employee costs the government an average of $126,500 annually in salary and benefits, while the average contract employee costs $250,000.

In her blog on outsourcing in the intelligence community, RJ Hillhouse notes that this is a problem largely of Congress' making:

By limiting the number of positions within the Intelligence Community while adding funds for services, Congress set the stage for the wide scale outsourcing we see today, with some 70% of the de facto workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service made up of contractors.

That's a story that could be told at a lot of other federal agencies, too.

The Army's top acquisition official, retired Gen. Claude M. Bolton Jr., is on the way out, the New York Times reports today. Bolton, a retired two-star Air Force general who made the unusual switch to a top civilian position in another military service six years ago, plans to leave on Jan. 2.

There's a brief profile of Bolton in the Sept. 15, 2005 issue of Government Executive.

Today's breaking news is that Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's Vice Chief of Staff, has issued a memo ordering commanders to plan for furloughs of civilians and contract workers if members of Congress can't iron out their differences on an Iraq spending bill.

"Military manpower, if available at your location, will be authorized to replace civilian and contractor workforce," Cody writes. " Military personnel other than those preparing to deploy should be considered available."

Here's the text of the memo:

-----Original Message-----
From: Cody, Richard A GEN VCSA
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 7:32 PM
To:

VCSA SENDS

TO ALL COMMANDS AND AGENCIES

SUBJECT: Contingency Budget Planning

REF A. SecDef Memo, 16 NOV 07, Subj: Contingency Budget Planning

REF B. SecArmy and CSA Memo, 20 NOV 07, Subj. Contingency Budget Planning

REF C. VCSA Email, 26 SEP 07, Subj. Outlook for Funding in FY 2008

1. The FY2008 DoD Appropriations Act did not provide funds for the Global
War on Terror (GWOT) and we do not know at this time when or if the GWOT
funds will be approved by Congress.

2. References A and B directed that we take immediate action to begin
planning to reduce operations at all Army bases. This message provides
instructions for developing these plans. Send your initial plans through
your RM channels. They are due on 4 DEC 2007. Your plans will be reviewed

by a G3-led task force here at HQDA.

3. This is a planning effort, repeat, a planning effort to reduce OMA
funded operations to the minimum mission essential level. Your initial
plans will identify the weekly cost to continue those OMA funded minimum
mission essential activities allowable under Feed and Forage after 23
February 08 and will include the amount of OMA funds available for return to
the Department when all other services and functions are discontinued.

Guidance in reference C stands; take no action at this time to slow any
program. Continue to execute your approved programs and do not implement
any spending restriction or reduction in the scope and pace of operations
until notified. Continue following existing guidance to review civilian
hiring actions and contracts.

4. Include these assumptions in your plans:

a. On or about 22 February 08, all distributed Operation and Maintenance,
Army (OMA) funds will be fully obligated or committed.

b. On 23 February 08, installations and commands will move to a "warm base"

status and all OMA funded activities will cease except those noted in
paragraph 4 below.

c. Civilian furloughs may last more than 30 days and therefore require a 60
day notice.

d. Military manpower, if available at your location, will be authorized to
replace civilian and contractor workforce. Military personnel other than
those preparing to deploy should be considered available.

e. Only direct funded OMA activities are affected. Programs, projects and
activities funded with other than OMA will continue as planned.

5. Your plans should identify the minimum mission essential activities
along with their estimated costs that are permissible by Feed and Forage (if
approved by OSD) and the impact of discontinuing all other services and
functions effective 23 February 08. For these planning purposes, consider
the following as minimum mission essential operations:

a. To protect the life, health and safety of occupants and residents of
Army installations.

b. To protect and maintain assets vital to the national defense.

6. Your plans should also provide a separate estimate of the weekly minimum
essential costs in order to determine what is permissible under Feed and
Forage:

a. Support forces deployed overseas including Europe, Korea, Japan and
COCOM activities.

b. Prepare forces for deployment to include recruiting, individual training
and unit training.

7. The ASA(FM&C) will provide a reporting format through RM channels. You
should be prepared to report the following information:

a. Life, Health and Safety. Those activities and services and their
estimated weekly cost that must be continued to protect occupants and
residents of Army installations to include military, civilians and Family
members.

b. Training. The amount of OMA funds by week necessary to support training
activities for deploying forces.

c. Quality of Life. Those activities and services for Soldiers and
Families that will be impacted and/or terminated once all existing OMA funds
are fully obligated or committed.

d. Depot Level Reset. To the maximum extent possible, plan to work off FY
07 carry over and new orders received from customers funded with other than
OMA appropriations. Identify the amount of OMA (both base and GWOT) by week
necessary to fund only the organic depot work required to keep production
lines operating and the total amount of OMA Reset funds available for
return.

e. Recruiting: Report the minimum weekly cost to continue to recruit the
force and train the load.

f. Mobilization and Demobilization: Provide the weekly cost to continue
mobilization and demobilization activities to support rotations into and out
of theaters of operation.

g. Field Level Maintenance: Plan to suspend all field level maintenance
except that necessary for life, health or safety or to support the war
fight. Provide the weekly cost for the latter.

8. In the report, you will be asked to break out the activities in
paragraphs 4, 5 and 6 into these categories:

a. Civilian Personnel. Identify the number of minimum mission essential
(Life, Health and Safety) and non-mission essential civilian personnel
funded through direct OMA appropriations. You should anticipate that the
Department will issue furlough notices to civilian employees with sufficient
lead time to implement a furlough on or about 23 February 08. For foreign
national personnel, provide the equivalent of furlough procedures under the
respective Status of Forces Agreement. Identify the weekly payroll cost of
mission essential civilian personnel. Furlough dates will be provided for
US Civilian personnel by G1.

b. Contracts. Identify the total amount of OMA funds needed for minimum
mission essential contracts. Also identify the amounts that can be returned
to the Department when all other services and functions are terminated or
suspended on or about 23 February 08. Factor in termination costs before
reporting the amount available for return.

9. DoD is considering the use of other authorities, Feed and Forage for
example, to continue essential operations as directed. The ASA(FM&C) will
issue instructions on these special funding authorities. The G1 will
provide additional guidance on civilian furloughs.

10. POCs are:

They say an army travels on its stomach, but it also has to operate by the seat of its pants. And apparently the U.S. Army is having a little problem in that regard. USA Today reports that the Army is retrofitting 1 million uniforms worn by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan because of reports of "crotch durability problems." Single-stitched seams in sensitive areas just aren't cutting it in the rough terrain in which soldiers are conducting operations.

Update: Anne Laurent reminds me that Government Executive was on the crotch reinforcement story back in May.

Who gets affected most when gas prices keep going higher and higher? One likely answer, NPR reports today, is the U.S. military. Its 340,000-barrel-a-day rate of oil consumption would rank it 38th in the world if it were a country. The C-130 Hercules transport plane, to take just one Defense gas-guzzler, gets three gallons to the mile (that's not miles to the gallon).

So how does the Pentagon cope with rising fuel costs? "It is, in the short term, a management challenge," says Michael O'Hanlon, a former Defense Department budgeteer who's now with the Brookings Institution. "And there are many Pentagon comptroller types who are staying up late into the evening figuring out how to make this work."

The debate over potential forced reassignments of Foreign Service officers to Iraq has spilled over into Dipnote, the State Department's new blog. Yesterday, Dipnote posted an entry called "A Letter From Iraq to My Overwrought Colleagues" by John Matel, a career Foreign Service officer who leads the Provincial Reconstruction Team embedded in Al Asad in Al Anbar Province.

"Take a deep breath and calm down," wrote Matel. "I have been here for a while now, and you may have been misinformed about life at a PRT."

The "wailing and gnashing of teeth" about Iraq being a "death sentence" is "just way over the top," Matel said.

"We all know that few FSOs will REALLY be forced to come to Iraq anyway," he added. "Our system really does not work like that. This sound and fury at Foggy Bottom truly signifies nothing. Get over it! I do not think many Americans feel sorry for us and it is embarrassing for people with our privileges to paint ourselves as victims."

The war on terror has been tough on our enemies and arduous for U.S. forces deployed overseas, but one group has benefited: The deer at Fort Detrick, Md. The Associated Press reports that after the Army suspended archery hunts at Fort Detrick for security reasons in 2002 and 2003, the number of white-tailed deer on the installation's grounds increased dramatically.

Last year, the Agriculture Department recommended culling the herd, so sharpshooters killed 100 deer at the fort on Feb. 28 and March 1. Such an effort may be undertaken again, because biologists say the herd's still growing, even though bow-hunting has resumed.

Let me get this straight: First the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission votes to shift thousands of jobs from leased facilities in northern Virginia to Fort Belvoir. Then, when it becomes clear that this will create a traffic nightmare, officials push the idea of instead moving some of the folks to land in Springfield, Va., that is currently home to General Services Administration warehouses.

Now, the Washington Post reports, the Springfield site faces some competition from a piece of property in Alexandria that developers are pushing the Army to consider. Some or all of the jobs slated for Springfield could ultimately end up at the Alexandria site.

It's now starting to look like this shift --which affects about 6,000 of the more than 22,000 jobs originally targeted for consolidation at Fort Belvoir -- will simply move people out of one set of leased space in Virginia to another. If that's the case, my question is: Why bother? Wasn't the whole point of the BRAC move to get these agencies out of leased offices and onto a military base?

In case you haven't seen it, I want to draw your attention to Government Executive's Oct. 1 feature on Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. As former commander in Iraq, Casey has a unique perspective on not just military efforts overseas, but those of civilian agencies, too:

It's not just the armed forces that are going to cause this nation to succeed at what it's doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror. In this type of war, it's the political; it's the economic elements that have to reinforce what the military is doing. So there are huge opportunities for the rest of the government to contribute to what is going on here. And I think that is going to take some real cultural change in the different organizations of the government. The military wasn't the only one that was downsized as a result of the Cold War.

USAID [the U.S. Agency for International Development], the United States Information Agency, those things were really taken down, so we don't necessarily have the capability anymore to go out and do the things we need to. What do the other agencies or governments need to do to operate in the environment we're going to be operating in for the next decade or so?

Sorry I forgot to post about this yesterday, but in case you missed it, I wanted to take notice of this exchange detailed in the Washington Post between a Navy lawyer and the attorney for Shaker Aamer, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It involves the issue of exactly how Aamer came into possession of a pair of Under Armour briefs, and it is priceless.

Of the candidates for president, few have been more consistent and vocal in their opposition to the war in Iraq than Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Ron Paul. So it's interesting that USA Today reports that they are the leading candidates in terms of campaign contributions from people who identify themselves as working for one of the military services or the National Guard. A study by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics also shows that military members continue to devote more of their contributions to Republicans than Democrats, but the gap is narrowing. In 2002, Republicans running for president or Congress got 77 percent of military contributions. So far this time around, the figure is 59 percent.

The Army wants new soldiers, and it wants them now. The service is offering a $20,000 "quick-ship" bonus for recruits who agree to report to basic training within 30 days of enlistment, and then serve for two years on active duty.

[Warning: You probably don't want to click on the links below from a federal computer.]

The contractors get all the perks. "Tori of Atlanta," a professional "escort," reports on the Erotic Review Web site that she's heading to Baghdad's Green Zone to provide a little "R&R....American Style."

Then she adds, "My apologies but at this time I am UNABLE to plan any meetings w/ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY. (The members of [the private military contractor] community has an exclusive arrangement during this visit.)"

(Hat tip: Wonkette, via Danger Room.)

Apparently, the future is now for the Army's Future Combat Systems project. Last week, Army Times reported that the service has decided to come up with a new name for the project, under the theory that it's happening now, not at some distant point in the future. (Of course, as GovExec's Greg Grant reported in May, the jury's out on whether it will work the way the Army thinks it will.)

Now, the folks over at Danger Room have launched a contest to come up with a new name befitting the program. And, of course, along with the serious entries, there are some snarky ones. To wit:

• Fortunate Contractor Scenario


• Fantastic Cash Sink


• Future Congressional Subpoenas


• Battle-Oriented Optical Networking Data Operations Ground-Geared Linkage Elements (do the acronym yourself)

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies.”

--Brig. Gen. William Troy, former interim commander at Fort Lewis, Wash., in a May e-mail message announcing that the base would shift from holding separate memorial services for each soldier killed in action after deploying from the base to holding combined services once a month. That policy has been delayed after soldiers' families and veterans protested it, the New York Times reports.

Imagine you're a civilian Army employee working in Iraq, riding alongside service members in your Humvee when it's hit by a roadside bomb. You receive initial treatment for your severe injuries, but then you're turned away from military hospitals for ongoing treatment. Instead, you're told to work through the Labor Department's Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, where you find out that your war wounds don't really match any of its bureaucratic workplace injury codes. You then embark on an odyssey of trying to find doctors in the civilian health care system with experience treating your injuries.

That's what happened to Mike Helms, a counterintelligence expert with the Army's 902nd Military Intelligence Group, the Washington Post reports today. Helms' description of his plight is heartbreaking:

"I did not have an 'accident' while working. I was subjected to an offensive attack by an enemy of the U.S. government who attempted to kill me. Why am I under workers' comp if workers' comp does not recognize a combat injury?"

Helms, of course, is hardly the first federal employee to run into roadblocks at OWCP. As Brian Friel reported in Government Executive in Sept. 2002:

Survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, continue to deal with the workers' compensation office today. Many survivors report that dealing with OWCP has been a roller coaster ride: Responsive, competent claims examiners ease some interactions, while nonresponsive, incompetent examiners mar others.

The Pentagon's apparently got a lot of extra stuff. It's junking hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of gear, including combat boots, helmets, vests and aircraft parts, the Associated Press reports. That's drawn the ire of military surplus dealers, who say they'd be happy to buy some of the junk the Defense Department is throwing on the scrap heap -- and sell it back to the military services later if it turns out they actually need the stuff.

In case you missed it last week, next year's military pay raise (and by extension, the civilian raise, which is typically closely linked to whatever the troops get) got dragged into the whole debate over whether and when to pull our troops out of Iraq.

First, on Friday, President Bush made the following statement at the White House:

In February, I submitted to Congress a Defense Department spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year that will provide funds to upgrade our equipment for our troops in Iraq and provides a pay raise for our military -- it's a comprehensive spending request that Congress has failed to act on. Instead, the Democratic leaders chose to have a political debate on a precipitous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. The House and Senate are now scheduled to leave for their August recess before passing a bill to support our troops and their missions. Even members of Congress who no longer support our effort in Iraq should at least be able to provide an increase in pay for our troops fighting there.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't take kindly to the insinuation that Democrats didn't care whether troops got a salary increase next year, and quickly fired back:

While Democrats have fought for a pay raise for our troops all along, the President was against the pay raise before he was for it. Two months ago, his Administration explicitly opposed Democratic efforts to give our troops a 3.5 percent raise and threatened to veto legislation if the pay raise was passed by Congress, calling it "unnecessary."

Here's an interesting observation by David J. Kilcullen, a former Australian Army lieutenant colonel who is now a senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq:

At present, the U.S. defense budget accounts for approximately half of total global defense spending, while the U.S. armed forces employ about 1.68 million uniformed members. By comparison, the State Department employs about 6,000 foreign service officers, while the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has about 2,000. In other words, the Department of Defense is about 210 times larger than USAID and State combined—there are substantially more people employed as musicians in Defense bands than in the entire foreign service.

(Hat tip: Foreign Policy's Passport blog, via Andrew Sullivan)

The corner of the defense contracting industry devoted to developing systems to secure equipment and cargo may seem mundane, but apparently it's filled with intrigue. The Washington Times reports today that Robert Fischetti, former sales director at Peck & Hale LLC in West Sayville, N.Y. -- which makes such systems -- has pleaded guilty to trying to rig bids on Defense contracts. And he's not the only one: Two Pennsylvania executives have already entered guilty pleas on bid-rigging charges in cases involving Navy contracts for metal sling hoist assemblies.

Congratulations, Antonio Perez-Rodriguez! You're the 100,000th Defense Department employee to convert to the National Security Personnel System! And for that, you get a plaque, personally presented by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England.

It's common knowledge that many soldiers coming home from service in Iraq face severe mental health issues. And the State Department is dealing with similar issues regarding diplomats posted to the country. Now, the New York Times reports, another group is being heard from: contractors. There are more than 100,000 of them in Iraq, and in many cases they serve right alongside military forces, facing many of the same dangers. And they're often completely on their own to find help dealing with their problems after they get home.

More than 78,000 American troops are still officially listed as missing in action from World War II. Another 8,100 are MIA from Korean War, and 1,750 from Vietnam. The Associated press reports today that the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, is painstakingly tracking down the remains of as many of these service members as they can -- even if that means hacking through thick foliage on Iwo Jima with machetes in search of long-abandoned caves.

Remember when federal executives would say that they didn't use those newfangled computer things? It was kind of quaint right up to the point where it became absurd. Haven't we about reached that stage with e-mail and Internet usage? It's a little disturbing when the head of the entire United States Defense Department says, "I don't do e-mail."

USA Today reports on Cmdr. Mark Russell, who says the Navy's trying to run him out because he has criticized the military's mental health care system. Russell has filed a complaint with the Defense Department inspector general alleging that he received negative job reviews this year and last after speaking out.

A Navy spokesman says the drop in ratings of Russell's advancement prospects from "early promote" to "promotable" doesn't mean that he couldn't advance to captain someday. But a former Navy public affairs officer calls the two "promotable" ratings a "kiss of death" and "career-ender."

It seems clear from this RAND report that "promotable" ain't much of a rating. Here's the full scale of rankings, from the bottom to the top: “not observed,” “significant problems,” “progressing,” “promotable,” “must promote,” and “early promote.”

The Red Cross reports that identity theft scammers are targeting military spouses in a particularly egregious scam. They call up the spouse, identify themselves as representing the Red Cross, and say that the spouse's husband has been hurt in Iraq and evacuated to Germany. Then they ask for a bunch of personal information about the service member.

The Red Cross, of course, notes that in the real world, it never relates this kind of casualty information to anybody under any circumstances, or attempts to collect personal data about service members.

(Hat tip: Snopes.com.)

Here's Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commanding general of Multinational Corps-Iraq, at the Pentagon yesterday on progress since January resulting from the "surge" of new troops to Iraq:

In conventional warfare, mass of troops can have an immediate impact on the fight. However, in a counterinsurgency, we've quickly learned, they must be immersed into the local populace. And it will take new units anywhere from 30 to 60 days to really get a feel for their sectors so they truly can have an impact on security and stability in their area. When fighting a counterinsurgency, you have to first understand the environment you're operating in, its people, the enemy, the physical and human terrain and the local dynamics, and only then can you begin to understand what must be done to accomplish your mission.

So my message is that the surge is not yet fully in place, and that it will take time and patience before we begin to realize its effects. Additionally, you must understand that success cannot be achieved just through military means alone.

The White House has threatened to veto legislation passed by the House yesterday that would provide incremental funding for operations in Iraq, holding back most money until the Bush administration completed a status report in July on the war. At that point, Congress could pass fast-track legislation setting a date for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. In addition to being ideologically opposed to such deadlines, President Bush objected to the House measure (H.R. 2206) on management grounds. From the statement of administration policy on the bill:

Incremental funding will cause breaks in production schedules of critical equipment, delay the delivery of equipment to deploying forces, halt the hiring of needed civilian personnel, lead to far more expensive and burdensome short term procurements, and undermine the [Defense] Department’s ability to relieve stress on the force. It will also disrupt daily operations at installations, driving up costs and impacting support activities for military personnel and their families, affecting quality of life, morale and retention.

Whatever your position on the war, it's hard to argue that point.

The mess at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has already turned into a rather large black eye for the Army, and yesterday cost the commander of the facility his job. But it's worse than that: This is shaping up to be perceived as yet another example of bureaucratic failure on the part of a large federal institution. Witness this column yesterday in Slate by Phillip Carter, a Los Angeles attorney, former Army officer and Iraq veteran. Key quote :

Military bureaucracies (and their civilian brethren like the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency) also do a terrible job of reacting to crises. Large bureaucracies like the Army provide a systematic, uniform, mediocre response to chronic problems. But where time is of the essence, bureaucracies often fail spectacularly. On the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer last week, [Army Surgeon General Kevin] Kiley tried to deflect blame by calling the mess at Walter Reed "a very large, complex process," which required a nuanced approach to bureaucratic, medical, and contractual problems. But such a bureaucratic response misses the point when the bureaucracy itself is the enemy, as it is for the soldiers in Building 18.

Kiley's also the guy who called the recent Washington Post series uncovering conditions at the facility a "one-sided representation." (Thanks to Danger Room for the tip on this one.)

Attention Pentagon employees: Over at his new "Danger Room" blog at Wired, Noah Shachtman is on the hunt for the military's lamest Web sites -- "the ones that make you cringe in their total indifference to public understanding, and good government."

I daresay that folks on the inside will be in a better position to expose these sites to the light of day than anyone else. So what do you say, people? Can we help him out?