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This site gets much traffic from all around the world, from people searching for news from Iraq, making it an ideal place to host stories from deployed forces in harm’s way.  In my travels I’ve met many budding writers who are now wearing boots and carrying rifles, and I found their stories so compelling that I want the world to see.

Press Release from Hughes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Erin Studer
Hughes Network Systems, LLC
(301) 601-7216
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Kristin Graybill
ConnellyWorks, Inc.
(571) 323-2585, ext. 2190
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Hughes Expands High-Speed Satellite Internet Access for U.S. Troops in Middle East and Central Asia

Troops in Afghanistan and Iraq Connect with Families via Hughes-Delivered Service

Germantown, Md., December 7, 2009—Hughes Network Systems, LLC (HUGHES), the global leader in broadband satellite networks and services, today announced that it has expanded provision of high-speed satellite Internet access for U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Available at U.S. military bases, the broadband Internet service is being delivered via the company’s new operations hub in Dubai, enabling troops to stay in touch with family and friends at home, including sending photos and videos, connecting over social networking sites and making VoIP telephone calls.

Read more: Press Release from Hughes

Friday Morning at the Pentagon

Published: 27 November 2009

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY
McClatchy  Newspapers

Over  the last 12 months, 1,042 soldiers, Marines,  sailors and Air Force personnel have given their  lives in the terrible duty that is war.   Thousands more have come home on stretchers,  horribly wounded and facing months or years in  military  hospitals.

This  week, I'm turning my space over to a good friend  and former roommate, Army Lt. Col. Robert  Bateman, who recently completed a yearlong tour  of duty in Iraq and is now back at the  Pentagon.

Here's  Lt. Col. Bateman's account of a little-known  ceremony that fills the halls of the Army  corridor of the Pentagon with cheers, applause  and many tears every Friday morning.  It  first appeared on May 17 on the Weblog of media  critic and pundit Eric Alterman at the Media  Matters for America Website.

Read more: Friday Morning at the Pentagon

Huge Money is being wasted in Afghanistan

The following interrogative from McClatchy Newspapers to USAID is the tip of the iceberg.  The more one looks, the more squandering one finds.

 

Please Click here to view the entire document.

 

Securing Helmand

30 September 2009

Please Click Here to view the entire Report from Jeffrey A. Dressler

 

Pedro Inspired the Vikings

Note: I asked Danish journalist Camilla Fuhr Nilsson to write a couple of stories about the Air Force Pedros.  After publication of her first installment, she emailed from Afghanistan, surprised to have gotten “thank you” notes from readers.  As a journalist, Camilla had never gotten “thank yous” before.  In the about five years I have covered the wars, it is safe to say that British and American service members, their families and others, have thanked me 100% of the time, for each of hundreds of dispatches.  That would be tens of thousands of thank yous…maybe more.  If not for those thank yous, I would have quit after just a few months in combat.  The power of a sincere “thank you” can never be measured.  And now Camilla’s second story:

By Camilla Fuhr Nilsson
Published: 30 September 2009

“These things we do that others may live” is the current motto of the US Air Force combat search and rescue team, or Pedro as they are called when deployed to Afghanistan. They fly into the battlefield with their smooth Pave Hawk helicopters and evacuate the wounded infantry soldiers and Marines. On a recent evacuation of two Danish soldiers in the middle of a battle with the Taliban, the Viking ancestors made a memorable difference to the 129th American Air Force Pedros crew.

It was a hot day in June even though it was still early in the morning. The traditionally dry heat of the southern Afghan desert, combined with the humidity of the green vegetation known as the Green Zone around the Helmand River, made the Danish infantry soldiers from the Danish Royal Husars drip with sweat as they patrolled in the green fields with heavy equipment and body amour. The squad, also known as Charlie Coy, soon got engaged in a heavy battle with Taliban fighters. Two Danish soldiers were shot by the Taliban and the medic called for evacuation—the so-called medevac. The American Pedro team 129th responded to the call.

Read more: Pedro Inspired the Vikings

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