The Army says the coordinator of a sexual assault prevention program at Fort Hood, Texas, is under investigation for “abusive sexual contact” and other alleged misconduct. He has been suspended from all duties.
The announcement Wednesday evening came just days after the arrest of the Air Force’s head of sexual assault prevention on charges of groping a woman in a northern Virginia parking lot.
The Army said a sergeant first class, whose name was not released, is accused of pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates.
For those playing score at home, that’s two of the four major branches of the military.
Today in forms of irony that simply shouldn’t exist: This ugly, depressing story.
It’s made it extremely hard to interact with authority figures. During my tour in Afghanistan, I was a little bit more scared of everything. I can’t work with certain individuals just since they remind me of Staff Sgt. Walker.A reported victim of Staff Sgt. Luis Walker • Discussing how she felt in the months and years after having been sexually assaulted by the Air Force instructor. She was one of five women to speak at his sentencing hearing on Saturday. Walker, convicted of multiple counts of rape and sexual assault, will face 20 years in prison for these crimes. He could have gotten life.
Think you can keep a secret for 28 years? Beat this guy. David Hemler, 49, evaded capture for nearly three decades after going AWOL from the U.S. Air Force after becoming a peace activist. Hemler said he didn’t know what he was getting into with the military and that they wouldn’t dismiss him after he requested. So, in 1984, he left his Germany-based squadron and moved to Sweden, where he has a wife and kids. He’s lived there so long that, as you’ll hear in the video above, he has a pronounced Swedish accent. The Swedish government promised not to extradite him if he went public with his tale, according to Hemler. So here he is.
After 469 days in orbit, a X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle has touched down at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, bringing to an end a lengthy, classified military mission. The spacecraft, made by Boeing, is reusable and unmanned. In a statement, the Air Force said the “newest and most advanced re-entry spacecraft” performed in space and successfully landed “safely and successfully.” source
» The Eagle has landed … poorly. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in a drone that was still crash landing as recently as March 2011. A squadron of four Gray Eagles is currently active in Afghanistan, but unstable software — what caused the drone to crash last March — still calls for more tests. They better get moving; the Army has an order in for 164 of them within the next decade.
Follow ShortFormBlog • Find us on Twitter & Facebook
An amateur satellite-watcher has accused North Korea of lying about its plans for an upcoming satellite launch. Ted Molczan crunched the numbers on the rocket’s planned flight path, according to a notice given to regional shipping and airline companies, and found they did not match up with claims from the DPRK’s government. Apparently he’s not the only one who thinks that things might not be what they seem. In an email to Wired, Air Force Space Command officer Brian Weeden expressed his own doubts about the honesty of the official story. “This is a country that has never successfully placed a satellite into orbit and doesn’t have a satellite industry,” said Weeden. “To try and put a fairly advanced satellite — remote sensing and weather, using UHF radio and X-band satellite communications — into a fairly precise orbit is quite the undertaking.” (photo by David Guttenfelder/AP) source
The Dover Air Force Base mortuary for years disposed of some dead troops’ body parts by burning them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill, a practice that officials have since abandoned in favor of burying the remains at sea.The lead on the Washington Post’s story about the military … dumping dead soldiers’ remains in landfills. Let us repeat. DUMPING DEAD SOLDIERS’ REMAINS IN LANDFILLS. This is not cool. It makes yesterday’s story look like nothing. Holy cow. This is awful.
A missing ankle bone. Some missing tissue. A sawed-off arm. War is an ugly thing, and the death of a soldier is certainly one of the more difficult things to put into a pretty package. But three employees at the Dover, Delaware Air Force base found out that “close enough” isn’t good enough when it’s someone’s life in the package. They got reprimanded (but not fired) for the mishandling of the soldiers’ remains, leading to some shocking and gruesome details getting out to the press. As this is a sensitive issue, the Air Force is working to ensure this won’t happen again. “We and every employee of the Dover Port Mortuary understand the obligations of this work, the sanctity of this work, the necessity, the need for reverence, the need for dignity and respect for our fallen, just as if these were our sons and our daughters,” noted Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the chief of staff for the Air Force. source
So there was a gunman on a Tucson Air Force base, but no shots were fired. No word on his whereabouts. UPDATE: Now officials say he’s holed up in a building on the base. (via @BreakingNews)
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
Exclusive: How the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the...
soon
Yahumblr.
Google found the...
» Update: Reports now suggest that there are unconfirmed reports of a gunman on the premises, not reports of a shooting.
» Escape! The two men booked it out of Libya in Mirage jets, landing at Malta International Airport along with two helicopters carrying seven civilians who claim to be French, though only one has a passport. The duo, both reportedly colonels in the Libyan Air Force, flew low out of a Tripoli airfield to avoid detection.
» What’s the point? Not allowing people to read The New York Times and The Guardian seems a little extreme, and the effect is futile, anyway. Why’s that? Well, see, all they have to do to read the cables is GO HOME AND FIRE UP THEIR LAPTOP. Wow, that’s some effective security there, guys. By the way, the Army, Navy and Marines aren’t doing this, and the Department of Defense is formally distancing itself from the Air Force on this issue.
If the law is changed, successfully implementing repeal and assimilating openly homosexual Marines into the tightly woven fabric of our combat units has strong potential for disruption at the small unit level, as it will no doubt divert leadership attention away from an almost singular focus of preparing units for combat.Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos • Offering perhaps the strongest argument against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” His comments, made in front of a Senate panel, should be obvious in the wake of the Pentagon’s recent study, which showed Marines to be the branch most resistant to the idea of openly gay soldiers. From there, the responses grew progressively more positive, with the Army pushing for eventual repeal, the Air Force pushing for repeal in 2012, and the Navy pushing for repeal right freaking now. source (via • follow)
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
