Pentagon

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

China's Defense Ministry has accused the Pentagon of hyping Chinese military power and its threat to Taiwan in a depiction that will ultimately undermine ties between the two militaries. The annual Pentagon report to Congress on China's military always draws strenuous objections from Beijing. This year's report — which outlined a Chinese military modernization effort that is gaining momentum — comes as both Washington and Beijing are encouraging their militaries to built trust and improve communications.

China's Defense Ministry has accused the Pentagon of hyping Chinese military power and its threat to Taiwan in a depiction that will ultimately undermine ties between the two militaries. The annual Pentagon report to Congress on China's military always draws strenuous objections from Beijing. This year's report — which outlined a Chinese military modernization effort that is gaining momentum — comes as both Washington and Beijing are encouraging their militaries to built trust and improve communications.

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

WASHINGTON -- Under criticism for poor treatment of injured soldiers, the Pentagon announced new measures yesterday to provide more health screenings, improve its record keeping system, and simplify an unwieldy disability claims system. Testifying before a House panel, Michael Dominguez, principal deputy undersecretary of defense, and Major General Gale Pollock, the Army's acting surgeon general, acknowledged a need for major changes in the outpatient treatment of wounded soldiers and veterans.

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over a six-year period and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable, congressional investigators say. The department compounded the problem by reimbursing employee claims for tickets bought by the Pentagon, the investigators said. To demonstrate how easy it was to have the Pentagon pay for airline travel, the investigators posed as Defense employees, had the department generate a ticket, and showed up at the ticket counter to pick up a boarding pass.

ARLINGTON, Va. — A Marine Corps reservist carrying a backpack containing what initially appeared to be bomb-making material was detained near the Pentagon early yesterday, but authorities later said the suspicious items were not explosive. Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Va., 22, was discovered after 1 a.m. yesterday inside Arlington National Cemetery. Melaku, a naturalized citizen originally from Ethiopia, was detained for trespassing after becoming uncooperative, authorities said.

WASHINGTON -- In an action some critics have branded as a backdoor draft, the military over the past several years has held tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines on the job and in war zones beyond their retirement dates or enlistment length. It is a widely disliked practice that the Pentagon, under new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is trying to figure out how to cut back on. Gates has ordered that the practice, known as "stop loss," be minimized. At the same time, he is looking for ways to decrease the hardship for...

WASHINGTON -- In the latest allegations of poor treatment for veterans, the Pentagon said yesterday that it is investigating conditions at a veterans' retirement home in the capital. A medical team went for an inspection Wednesday after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates got a letter from congressional investigators about allegations of a rising death rate and rooms spattered with blood, urine, and feces at Armed Forces Retirement Home . The letter also cited allegations that the rate of residents sent to hospitals is increasing and that a veteran had a...

WASHINGTON -- Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general who is running for president, got himself in hot water with his Pentagon bosses more than once in his 34-year military career. Clark matter-of-factly recounts when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff grumbled that Clark had "one foot on a banana peel and one foot in the grave. " Less than a year later, Clark was yanked out of his job as NATO's supreme allied commander. Plenty of generals in the US military have been chewed out, of course.

WASHINGTON - The House Armed Services Committee overwhelmingly backed a $642 billion defense bill Thursday that calls for construction of a missile defense site on the East Coast, restores aircraft and ships slated for early retirement, and ignores the Pentagon's cost-saving request for another round of domestic base closings. Despite the clamor for fiscal discipline, the committee crafted a military spending blueprint that's $8 billion more than the level President Obama and congressional Republicans agreed to last summer in the deficit-cutting law. The panel vote was 56-5.

The military and the intelligence community are doing everything possible to find 26-year-old Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was taken prisoner in Afghanistan nearly three years ago, Pentagon leaders said Thursday in the wake of criticism from the soldier's family. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says there is a poster of the Hailey, Idaho, soldier inside U.S. Central Command's operations center as a constant reminder that he is missing in action. "I can assure you that we are doing everything in our power, using our intelligence resources across the...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta slammed a House panel on Thursday for adding billions of dollars to President Barack Obama's defense budget, including money for a new East Coast missile defense site that the military says is unnecessary. Just hours after the House Armed Services Committee approved its $642 billion spending blueprint, Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the panel's additions ignored the careful strategic review that was the basis for the 2013 budget proposal.

Turning their budget knife to domestic programs to protect the Pentagon, House Republicans on Thursday approved legislation cutting food stamps, benefits for federal workers and social services programs like day care for children and Meals on Wheels for the elderly. President Barack Obama's Wall St. reform law would be rewritten under the legislation, passed on a 218-199 vote, while his controversial overhaul of the U.S. health care system would also be cut. The legislation would deny illegal immigrants child tax credits they can currently claim, while...

Republicans controlling the House are sparing the Pentagon, military veterans and most homeland security programs from the budget knife as action begins on a set of spending bills setting the day-to-day budgets for federal agencies. Foreign aid programs would absorb a 5 percent cut in legislation released Tuesday, while the FBI would receive a 2 percent budget hike in a separate measure. At issue is much of the nuts-and-bolts work of Congress, going line by line through the agency budgets funded each year through 12 appropriations bills.

The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

WASHINGTON - Five percent of Guantanamo Bay detainees have participated in terrorist activities since their release from the US navy prison, the Pentagon said yesterday. An additional 9 percent are believed to have joined - or rejoined - the fight against the United States and its allies, according to Defense Department data released amid a simmering political battle over where to send the detainees if the prison closes in January as planned. Constitutional scholars have long cast doubt on the Pentagon's detainee data, saying it's not proven that at least some of those who were released were even...