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Colleague Joe Klein has a great cover story this week on the flip side of veterans’ joblessness, PTSD and suicide: the exemplary examples being set in fields far removed from the battlefields by vets of our post-9/11 wars. As he notes, it’s currently behind the Time paywall, which means you won’t be able to read it online for awhile. But for those of you forlorn over the stories of what is happening to our beleaguered combat vets, it’s a tonic worth picking up.
President Obama’s goal at the NATO summit this week is looking increasingly clear: wrap up U.S. troops’ combat role over the coming year, and get the allies to pay more money to enable the Afghan military to fill the gap.
The House has approved a $643 billion defense-spending bill for 2013 that’s $3.7 billion more than the Obama Administration, and its Pentagon, is seeking. That’s just about the same amount the Congressional Budget Office estimates the House bill’s push for an East Coast missile shield will cost over the next five years.
Whenever federal bureaucrats running the nation’s parks get antsy that their purse is likely to shrink, they roll out something long known as the “Washington Monument strategy.” That’s the tried-and-true technique of warning the public that if money isn’t forthcoming, one of the first budget cuts will force the shutting down of the popular obelisk to Washington, D.C., tourists.
