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BAGHDAD — Baghdad is a city of checkpoints, manned mostly by Iraqi security forces (ISF) and ‘Son of Iraq’ (SoI) volunteers throughout the capital city. They are also a major concern of Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Dailey, senior enlisted advisor for the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad, the brigade responsible for a large section of northern Baghdad. “The most important thing for me is to take care of Soldiers,” said Dailey, a native of Palmerton, Pa. “In reality this is saving Soldiers lives. If we can get Iraqis to secure this place, on their...

After 100 years of publication, The Christian Science Monitor will stop the presses next year. For good. Editor John Yemma said Tuesday that his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Boston-based newspaper will stop publishing a daily print edition in favor of its Web site and a to-be-launched weekly news magazine in April, saving $1.5 million to $2 million a year. The paper has been considering the move for two years and made its final decision in the last few weeks. The paper was founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy in an attempt to silence the press from excoriating her church by offering a...

BAGHDAD — The Coalition Command Sgts. Maj. and senior enlisted advisors along with the Command Sgt. Maj. of the Iraqi Army and Iraqi National Police met together during the first Noncommissioned Officer Education System conference to discuss the way ahead for the standardization of training and doctrine for the Iraqi Security Forces' noncommissioned officers Mar. 20. "The focus of this conference was to give those senior enlisted leaders within theater a good lay down of what it is that we provide here at Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq, in the way of training, especially noncommissioned officers," said Multi-National Security...

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2007 – The military’s top enlisted servicemember received a very special care package at his Pentagon office this morning. Jeanette Cram, founder of troop-support group Treat the Troops, personally delivered a box of chocolate chip cookies to Army Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey, senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Treat the Troops is a member of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program that highlights and facilitates support for the nation’s men and women in uniform. Cram has been shipping cookies to deployed servicemembers around the world for 17...

Insight of a Sergeant Major (The author, J.D. Pendry, is a retired Army Command Sergeant Major who writes for Random House.) NO PUNCHES PULLED HERE Jimmy Carter, you're the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the Runner-in-Chief. Bill Clinton, you played "ring around the Lewinsky" while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia, and then you ran from it. Your...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 23, 2006 -- At 14, Roshan Safi was leading men in combat, running weapons behind Soviet lines to Afghan resistance forces. Today, at 34, he is the senior enlisted member in the Afghan National Army. U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey (left), senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Afghan Command Sgt. Maj. Roshan Safi (right), the first sergeant major of the Afghan National Army, speak with Afghan and American servicemembers assigned to the Afghan National Army Logistics Command Nov. 22 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo by Kathleen T....

Hanoi (dpa) - Vietnam's most famous war-time spy Pham Xuan An, who worked as a trusted reporter for Western news agencies in Saigon by day and sent secret reports to Hanoi by night, has died at age 79, his family said Thursday. During the war, An was known as a "dean of the Vietnamese press corps," a crack reporter who brought fantastic contacts and keen political analysis to his work for news organizations including Reuters, the Christian Science Monitor and finally TIME magazine.

Forget the Reuters “fauxtography” scandal (well, don’t actually forget it) — the Dylan world is rocked this morning by a completely unsourced quote published in the Christian Science Monitor, in an article that attempts some kind of overview of Dylan’s career coinciding with the release of Modern Times . (Thanks to RCB for the tip.) Here it is, in context (bolding mine): Dylan, who declined to comment for this article, remains, as ever, an enigma. (Three years ago, he called himself “a 62-year-old Jewish atheist.'’) But he’s more open than he’s ever been about his past, even opening himself to...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2006 – For the man who now serves as the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, watching the televised image of an airliner hitting the World Trade Center signaled the end of an era as the country was thrust into war. Army Command Sgt. Maj. William J. Gainey, then regimental sergeant major for the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Polk, La., said he remembers returning home after an early morning run Sept. 11, 2001, and flipping on the TV news as he cooled down. Gainey was transfixed by shots of...

WASHINGTON – The price tag for comprehensive immigration reform was not a key issue when the Senate passed its bill last May. But it is now. One reason: It took the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) - the gold standard for determining what a bill will cost - until last week to estimate that federal spending for this vast and complex bill would hit $127 billion over the next 10 years. At the same time, federal revenues would drop by about $79 billion, according to the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation. If lawmakers fix a tax glitch, that loss...

The insurgents allowed her to conduct occasional interviews about their organization in which she learned that they belonged to an insurgent council, including members of al Qaeda. "The main captor during all these interviews I would do was anxious to tell me about this. He told me his name was Abdullah Rashid," she said. "He said he had helped form this council … in Iraq that brought together some of the main Sunni insurgent groups, and he was the head of it. One of those groups in that council was al Qaeda and Zarqawi." She was held from Jan. 7...

I am posting this independent blog for the benefit of my fellow Freepers who have been watching the post-election controversy in Mexico, following a ping I received from Freeper SAJ -- thanks again SAJ -- to another thread posted earlier today on a Christian Science Monitor article reporting the closure of a popular foklore festival in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca due to local political protests and relating the matter to the larger post-election controversy in Mexico. To get to the point of why I am posting this separate from that thread, beyond the mere length of what I...

Freed US hostage Jill Carroll praised Iraq's insurgents and predicted their victory in an interview conducted by her captors before they released her today, according to a video posted on the internet. The footage, which could not be independently verified, appeared to have been filmed shortly before the freelance journalist was released today nearly three months after being kidnapped in Baghdad. "Did you think the American army or the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) would save you at any time?" a muffled male voice asked Ms Carroll in accented English. "Sometimes I thought maybe that they might come, they might...

BAGHDAD, Jan 22 (Reuters) - U.S. forces hunting kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll are raiding Iraqi homes in a race against time but, as with much of their counter-insurgency war, face the dilemma that their tactics can foster resentment. Operations designed to take her captors by surprise have angered those Iraqis who say troops have blasted their way into their homes, put sacks over their heads and detained their relatives in the search for Carroll, who was abducted on Jan 7. One such raid, shortly after the reporter was seized, targeted one of Baghdad's biggest Sunni mosques; the sight of...

Reuters - AL JAZEERA SHOWS VIDEO OF KIDNAPPED U.S. JOURNALIST IN IRAQ

Those who made New Year’s resolutions to quit smoking have had two weeks to contemplate the decision.Is it worth the hassle? Can they stick to it?Similarly, Lawrence itself is experiencing the effects of such a decision nearly two years after banning smoking in “all enclosed public places.”“It wasn’t my idea, and I wasn’t on board at first,” said Lawrence Mayor Boog Highberger. “But I think this is the most popular decision I’ve made since I’ve been on the City Commission. I know in certain circles it’s not, but it is if you count the population as a whole.”While the commission...

BAGHDAD, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A female Western journalist was kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday and her translator killed, police said. They said she was on her way to a meeting with a Sunni Arab leader when a car carrying an unknown number of gunmen blocked her vehicle in the Adel district near Malik bin Anas mosque in west Baghdad. The gunmen shot dead her driver, an Iraqi journalist who also worked as her translator, abandoned their car and drove off in hers. There has been a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq over the past few months...

SIERRA VISTA - As the Army continues its transformation, soldiers and their families can look to more stability on the home front, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Kenneth O. Preston said. The stability means soldiers will have a better idea of how often and when they will deploy, and for families, it means they will not have to be uprooted, leaving schools and jobs, Preston said Monday night. The Army's senior most noncommissioned officer is visiting Fort Huachuca today, where he will speak at the Network Enterprise Technology Command's Command Sergeant Major Conference. The message he will be giving the...

Friday's National Non-Smoking Day turned out to be a non-event for several for smokers The Royal Gazette caught up with. One smoker, who did not want to be named, said she had "no idea it was going on", and "was not sure if she would not have smoked if she had known". The Hamilton office worker who was outside smoking said that she "did not think it would have made a difference." Another man said he thought it was "a stupid idea because people should have choices. They have choices for everything else, we should have choices if we smoke...

Hood soldier's family thankful for community support and help By Debbie Stevenson Killeen Daily Herald FORT HOOD — One of Linnie Blankenbecler's biggest fears when she heard that her husband had died in Iraq was that no one but the family would be present to honor him at his new home. She quickly found out that this Army community and the active-duty ranks are a close-knit family. "I'm so grateful for their support, for all their giving, for all their graciousness. I could not have done this without them," Linnie said. "When I first heard about this, we've only been...

Publisher of Christian Science Monitor Dies at 72 BOSTON (AP) - John Lewis Selover, the publisher of The Christian Science Monitor and a Christian Science Church leader who helped shepherd the church's expansion, has died. He was 72. Selover, of Boston, died Friday "among family, after a brief illness at home," said Peter Osterlund, spokesman for the Christian Science Board of Directors. Osterlund said the family declined to specify the nature of the illness. Selover was elected to the board of directors in 1985, and later became the board's vice chairman. In 1998, he became the manager of The...

The U.S. Government isn’t alone in getting burned by the use of forged Iraq documents. The Christian Science Monitor has now apologized to suspended British Member of Parliament George Galloway for using forged documents to charge that he was in the pay of the Saddam Hussein regime. The paper declared, "On April 25, 2003, this newspaper ran a story about documents obtained in Iraq that alleged Saddam Hussein's regime had paid a British member of Parliament, George Galloway, $10 million over 11 years to promote its interests in the West." The Monitor, after an extensive investigation, had determined the papers...