President Obama announced late Sunday that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda responsible for the September 11 attacks, was killed in a firefight during an operation he ordered Sunday inside Pakistan, ending a 10-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist. American officials were in possession of his body, he said.
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(ivaw. org) Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan featured testimony from US veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.
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(collateralmurder. org) WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff and children.
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(HealthDay News) Researchers report that soldiers who have suffered concussions during their time in Iraq are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder and other physical health problems.

"There was indeed a higher rate of PTSD and/or health problems among those who had concussions versus those with other injuries," said study author Dr.
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Juan Alcantara's dream of becoming a U. S.
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(bbc) The White House has had to correct its facts about the killing of Bin Laden, and for some that has diminished the glow of success that has surrounded all those involved in the operation. Bin Laden wasn't armed when he was shot. It raises suspicions that this was indeed a deliberate shoot-to-kill operation. Here are the inaccuracies in the first version. The woman killed was not his wife.  More...

(guardian) Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed. Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world. They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year. Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians. Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks.  More...

(Chris Hedges for truth-out. org ) Jess Goodell enlisted in the Marines immediately after she graduated from high school in 2001. She volunteered three years later to serve in the Marine Corps’ first officially declared Mortuary Affairs unit, at Camp Al Taqaddum in Iraq. Her job, for eight months, was to collect and catalog the bodies and personal effects of dead Marines. She put the remains of young Marines in body bags and placed the bags in metal boxes.  More...

(cbs/ap) The suicide rate among 18- to 29-year-old men who've left the military has gone up significantly, the government said Monday. CBS News first revealed that young veterans in their early 20’s were killing themselves at an unusually high rate back in late 2007. Using never-before-seen 2004 and 2005 data, CBS News discovered that the rate of suicide among young veterans was an estimated two to four times higher than any other age group. The new preliminary data released by the Department of Veterans Affairs shows the suicide rate went up 26 percent from 2005 to 2007. It's assumed that most of the veterans in this age group served in Iraq or Afghanistan.  More...

(afp) Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog. Taliban-linked militants caused around 64 percent of all violent child deaths last year, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report. Children were also press-ganged, sexually exploited, deprived of health and education, and illegally detained by all sides in a war that is dragging into its ninth year since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. "At least three children were killed in war-related incidents every day in 2009 and many others suffered in diverse but mostly unreported ways," ARM director Ajmal Samadi said. Children died in suicide attacks and roadside bombings -- at the crux of the Taliban's arsenal against US, NATO and Afghan troops fighting the increasingly virulent insurgency as it spreads across the impoverished country.  More...

(nyt) After eight years of war, children with parents in the military are reporting signs of emotional wear and tear from long and repeated deployments, a new study shows. The study by the RAND Corporation found that children in military families were more likely to report anxiety than children in the general population. The researchers also found that the longer a parent had been deployed in the previous three years, the more likely their children were to have difficulties in school and at home. Those difficulties included things like missing school activities, feeling that people did not understand their problems, having to take care of siblings and struggling to deal with parents returning from deployment. The study, which was to be published Monday by the journal Pediatrics, is considered the largest on the subject, and was based on telephone interviews with nearly 1,500 children, ages 11 to 17, and their primary caregivers.  More...

(BBN Editors Note: this article in the San Antonio Express was published in August 2009, three months before the recent Fort Hood shootings. ). . . .  More...

(gazette) Before the murders started, Anthony Marquez’s mom dialed his sergeant at Fort Carson to warn that her son was poised to kill. It was February 2006, and the 21-year-old soldier had not been the same since being wounded and coming home from Iraq eight months before. He had violent outbursts and thrashing nightmares. He was devouring pain pills and drinking too much. He always packed a gun.  More...

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(lat) The conflict in Georgia is Russia's largest military engagement outside its borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Here are some of the key issues in the current crisis. Who is fighting whom? On one side is Russian air, naval and ground power. On the other is the military of Georgia, a small country that was once part of the Soviet Union but has a history of troubled relations with Moscow. Where are they fighting? The fighting revolves around two pro-Russian enclaves, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but has expanded through other parts of Georgia.  More...

(wapo) The Army admitted about one-fourth more recruits last year with a record of legal problems ranging from felony convictions and serious misdemeanors to drug crimes and traffic offenses, as pressure to increase the size of U. S. ground forces led the military to grant more waivers for criminal conduct, according to new data released yesterday. Such "conduct waivers" for Army recruits rose from 8,129 in fiscal 2006 to 10,258 in fiscal 2007. For Marine Corps recruits, they increased from 16,969 to 17,413.  More...

(AP) Casualties from two roadside bombs Monday made 2007 the deadliest year since the Iraq invasion. With nearly two months left in the year, 852 American military personnel have died in Iraq. This is despite October having the lowest monthly death toll of the year — 36. Some 850 troops died in 2004, mostly in larger, more conventional battles like the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants in November, and U. S.  More...

(AP) The head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards dismissed the possibility of a U. S. military action against Iran and warned that his forces would respond with an "even more decisive" strike if attacked, an Iranian news agency reported Friday. The comments by Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari came after the United States announced sweeping new sanctions against Iran focusing on the Revolutionary Guards, a force that is tasked with protecting Iran's Islamic government and reports to the country's supreme leader.  More...

(cnn) A former commander of coalition forces in Iraq issued a harsh assessment of U. S. management of the war, saying that American political leaders cost American lives on the battlefield with their "lust for power. " Retired Lt. Gen.  More...

(aje) Britain is to cut its number of soldiers in Iraq by more than half to 2,500 from next spring, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has told parliament in a key statement. "We plan, from next spring, to reduce force numbers in southern Iraq to a figure of 2,500," Brown said on Monday. Brown said Iraqi forces will take control of security in the southern province of Basra within two months, ending Britain's combat role in the country. "We plan to move to a second stage of overwatch, where the coalition would maintain a more limited re-intervention capacity," he said. The British prime minister said the focus of British troops in Iraq would shift predominantly to training and mentoring.  More...