Tag: US military

I was never a fan of allowing foreigners into the military and now it seems this program has become more trouble than it is worth:

Their brains, specialized talents and home country made them sought-after assets for the U.S. military.

Now these ambitious, well-educated Army recruits are finding themselves sidelined and under suspicion, many stalled wherever they were when the rules changed in late 2016. For some, that means being stuck under the restrictive rules of basic training or Army job specialty training in essential lockdown with few privileges, little to do and, as foreigners pending permanent immigration status, uncertainty about their futures.

Since 2009, the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest program has attracted 10,000 foreign-born recruits with language and medical skills to fill a recruitment and talent gap in the Army. In exchange, these mostly 30-somethings were offered the promise of professional advancement and a fast track to citizenship. But that stalled after the Department of Defense determined in September 2016 that MAVNIs posed “counterintelligence and security risks” (further detailed in a May 2017 memo) and instituted lengthy security screenings for every recruit in the program.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read much more at the link, but the way I look at it is if the military cannot recruit its own citizens to defend it than maybe the country is no longer worth defending.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out:

President Donald Trump, who repeatedly insisted during the 2016 campaign that Mexico would pay for a wall along the southern border, is privately pushing the U.S. military to fund construction of his signature project.

Trump has told advisers that he was spurned in a large spending bill last week when lawmakers appropriated only $1.6 billion for the border wall. He has suggested to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and congressional leaders that the Pentagon could fund the sprawling project, citing a “national security” risk.

After floating the notion to several advisers last week, Trump told House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that the military should pay for the wall, according to three people familiar with the meeting last Wednesday in the White House residence. Ryan offered little reaction to the idea, these people said, but senior Capitol Hill officials later said it was an unlikely prospect.

Trump’s pursuit of defense dollars to finance the U.S.-Mexico border wall underscores his determination to fulfill a campaign promise and build the barrier despite resistance in the Republican-led Congress. The administration’s last-minute negotiations with lawmakers to secure billions more for the wall failed, and Trump grudgingly signed the spending bill Friday after a short-lived veto threat.  [Chicago Tribune]

You can read more at the link.

This is ruling about prostitution outside US military bases is nothing new and widely known for decades throughout Korea:

A court issued a first-ever ruling acknowledging that the Republic of Korea actively justified or encouraged prostitution with the operation of US “military camp towns” for the sake of the military alliance and foreign currency acquisition.“In regarding the right to sexual self-determination of the women in the camp town and the very character of the plaintiffs as represented through their sexuality as means of achieving state goals, the state violated its obligation to respect human rights,” the court concluded, ordering the payment of compensation to all 117 plaintiffs.

Hon. Judge Lee Beom-gyun of Seoul High Court’s 22nd civil affairs division ruled on Feb. 8 in the case filed by 117 former military camp town prostitutes to demand damages from the state, which was ordered to pay compensation of 7 million won (US$6,370) to 74 of the plaintiffs and 3 million won (US$2,730) to the remaining 43.“According to official Ministry of Health and Welfare documents, [the state] actively encouraged the women in the military camp towns engage in prostitution to allow foreign troops to ‘relax’ and ‘enjoy sexual services’ with them,” the court said.“In the process, [the state] operated and managed the military camp towns with the intention or purpose of contributing to maintenance of a military alliance essential for national security by ‘promoting and boosting morale’ among foreign troops while mobilizing prostitutes for economic goals such as acquisition of foreign currency,” it ruled.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link, but there is some nuance to the ruling in favor of the prostitutes to worked outside of US military base. The court did not find the government liable for forcing them into prostitution, just managing it by forcing them into medical treatment:

But the court did not accept the plaintiffs’ claim that the state had also violated the law by establishing the base village in the first time “to allow prostitution to take place easily.”“It is impossible to conclude that the victims were in a situation where they did not begin engaging in prostitution within the area of their own free will or could not leave,” the court said.  [Hankyoreh]

This is important because if the government was found to have forced these women into prostitution than that would allow the Japanese right to say that the ROK government should stop complaining about World War II era comfort women when they had their own comfort women system going.  This is technically correct because the ROK government was not grabbing women out of their homes and putting them into clubs.

Many of the prostitutes came from poor families who sold their daughters to the club owners to make ends meet or put a son through college for example.  Other became prostitutes in the hope of marrying a GI to escape poverty.  However, they ended up in the club system they were effectively managed by the Korean government to not spread disease.  They were forcibly given STD treatments and those that were found to be diseased were then forcibly interned.  This is where the human rights violations come into play for these women by the state.

Something to keep in mind is that the US military bases were not the only locations with prostitutes.  Can prostitutes stationed outside ROK Army bases or even in urban red light districts now sue for damages as well?  What about the women brought in from the Philippines beginning in the 1990’s that were forced into prostitution?  Can they sue for damages as well?

There is a reason why Fitbits are not allowed in sensitive US military facilities and it appears they should not be used at secret US bases either:

An interactive map posted on the internet that shows the whereabouts of people who use fitness devices such as Fitbit also reveals highly sensitive information about the location and activities of troops at U.S. military bases, in what appears to be a major security oversight.

The Global Heat Map, published by the GPS tracking company Strava, uses satellite information to map the location and movements of subscribers to the company’s fitness service over a two-year period, by illuminating areas of activity.

Strava says it has 27 million users around the world, including people who own widely available fitness devices such as Fitbit, Jawbone and Vitofit, as well as people who directly subscribe to its mobile phone application. The map is not live — rather it shows a pattern of accumulated activity between 2015 and September last year.

Most parts of the United States and Europe, where millions of people use some form of fitness tracker, show up on the map as a blaze of light, because there is so much activity.

In war zones and deserts such as Iraq and Syria, the heat map becomes almost entirely dark — except for a few scattered pinpricks of activity. Zooming in on those brings into focus the locations and outlines of known U.S. military bases, as well as of other unknown and potentially sensitive sites — presumably because U.S. troops and other personnel are using fitness trackers as they move around.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but in most cases using a Fitbit to run around Yongsan Garrison is not going to provide valuable intelligence information.  However, if there is a bunch of Fitbit activity noticeable in an isolated area of Africa for example, it may be a tip off there is a secret US military base there.  That is what is driving the concern.

Here is what US Senator Duckworth had to say recently about her trip to South Korea:

When Senator Tammy Duckworth returned from a recent trip to South Korea and Japan, she brought back a sobering message: “Americans simply are not in touch with just how close we are to war on the Korean peninsula.” In a speech at Georgetown University, she laid out the U.S. military maneuvers over the past several months—including a nuclear–powered submarine heading to South Korea, the movement of three aircraft carriers to the Western Pacific, and the Army testing out “mobilization centers” for deploying troops and training soldiers to fight in tunnels like those beneath North Korea—that inform this worry. In an interview with me, she said the U.S. military seems to be operating with the attitude that a conflict “‘will probably happen, and we better be ready to go.’”

The Illinois Democrat believes this is primarily a response to the rhetoric coming out of Washington, where members of the Trump administration have repeatedlythreatened to use force if diplomacy fails to prevent North Korea from acquiring the capability to strike the United States with nuclear missiles. And even though the administration continues to emphasize its preference for a diplomatic solution, “I feel like the military hears the war-mongering tendencies coming out of the executive branch and many in the legislative branch and have seen the writing on the wall and they said, ‘Holy cow. We’re more likely to be called on now than we were two years ago,’” Duckworth said.

“I know that the military’s job is to be fully ready for any contingency, and I commend them and support them for continuing to prepare for war. I’m not saying that they’re going to war,” Duckworth said at Georgetown. “But it’s painfully clear from my visit to the [Korean Demilitarized Zone] and these movements that I am seeing that we shouldn’t ignore the signals that our military is sending with these actions. We know that the North Koreans and our allies in the region are certainly paying attention.”

Duckworth, a retired lieutenant colonel who lost her legs during the Iraq War when insurgents downed her helicopter, took the trip along with Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman from Arizona and a fellow Iraq War veteran, earlier this month. The two met with top South Korean and Japanese diplomats and defense officials as well as commanders of U.S. forces in South Korea. Duckworth said that she found “all three of the major military actors—American, Korean, and Japanese—…more ready [for war] than they’ve ever been.”  [The Atlantic]

You can read more at the link, but I find it interesting that Senator Duckworth is more worried about the rhetoric coming out Washington, but makes no mention of the rhetoric and actions backing it up coming out of Pyongyang that is firing missiles over Japan, setting off nuclear bombs, threatening to destroy Guam and other US cities, and even murdering someone with a nerve agent weapon in a busy international airport.

Considering all of this the US military would be derelict in its duties if it did not train for a possible military contingency in response to North Korean actions.  However from reading the article it appears that Senator Duckworth would prefer to have an untrained military so the Trump administration could not use it as an option to stop North Korea’s nuclear and ICBM programs if needed.

U.S. moves ships, bombers toward Korea ahead of Winter Olympics https://t.co/PNbRj1vJLj

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) January 15, 2018

After reading this article I was surprised to learn that these companies that use your DNA to trace your ancestry release this information to outside groups for their own initiatives:

At 68, retired Army Capt. Walter Rettberg thought he was done having children. Then he decided to trace his family tree with a DNA-testing kit and found Matthew.

Matthew Suh was a baby in South Korea when he was adopted nearly 40 years ago by an American couple. He grew up longing to find his biological mother but never thought about searching for his father because it seemed an impossible task.

All he knew was that his father had been an American soldier serving in South Korea.

Enter 325 Kamra, a U.S. nonprofit that’s building a DNA database to help South Korean adoptees find their birth parents, including U.S. military veterans.

In many cases, troops rotating through the country didn’t know the women they had sex with became pregnant, so the group is offering free DNA kits to all vets and their descendants.

“So many of them have been stationed here for a long time,” said Maria Savage, director of the group’s South Korea operation that launched this year. “So if they remember any encounters that they had then that’s enough for us.”

The DNA will help even if the vets didn’t father children, because it might lead to another relative who did, she said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

This is just another example of why these military sexual assault cases are not as black and white as the advocates want people to believe:

Members of the defense and prosecution teams made their closing statements Friday, on the third and final day of a preliminary hearing for Capt. Scott Hockenberry, an Army attorney and former special victims prosecutor accused of sexual assault and battery against a former girlfriend.

Hockenberry faces three counts of sexual assault and three counts of assault consummated by battery, based on accusations that he choked, slapped and held a knife to the accuser’s throat, in addition to forcing her to have sex without a condom during the summer of 2016.

U.S. Forces Korea’s Army chaplains meditate as part of events for their Buddhist temple stay at Boeun Temple in southern Seoul on Dec. 12, 2017. (Yonhap)

I never thought I would see the face of Gregory McQueen gracing the pages of the Stars & Stripes ever again after his conviction for trying to be a pimp at Ft. Hood, but I was wrong:

On paper, Gregory McQueen must have seemed like a great candidate to become a foster-care parent in Texas.

A married man and Army veteran, McQueen had served as battalion representative on a task force to prevent sexual harassment at Fort Hood in central Texas.

But some important information didn’t show up in a state background check before a foster-care agency hired McQueen and his wife last March to care for abused and neglected children

Two years ago, former Army 1st Sgt. McQueen pleaded guilty to more than a dozen military charges for attempting to run a prostitution ring in Fort Hood. As part of the plea deal he was demoted to private, sentenced to 24 months in prison, was stripped of his retirement pay and received a dishonorable discharge.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but I would hope the Defense Department is aggressively pursuing the updating of national databases because clearly people like McQueen should not be a foster parent.  With that said what kind of background checks are being done when a simple Google search would have exposed McQueen’s background that was highly publicized?