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On Monday, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin slammed President Barack Obama for trading five high-level terrorists for an American prisoner of war who reportedly deserted his troops five years ago and caused at least six soldiers to die while searching for him. "You blew it again, Barack Obama," Palin said, slamming Obama for "negotiating away any leverage against the bad guys as these bad guys – Osama Bin Laden's partners in evil crime – joyfully celebrate their 'win' in the deal you sealed." In a post titled, "Commander-in-Chief's Definition of 'Honorable Service' Includes Anti-American Actions While in Uniform; He Just...

Their son, Second Lieutenant Darryn Andrews, was also named in Nathan Bradley Bethea’s Daily Beast piece today as one of the men from his battalion killed in action during the search. If the accusation is true, it wouldn’t be the first time higher-ups tweaked the narrative about how an American soldier died to make it less problematic for the military. At the time his family say they were told that his men were hunting a Taliban commander and that the truck at the front of their group ended in a hole after being hit by an Improvised Explosive Device. As...

Several men who served with Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in Afghanistan say Bergdahl deserted in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban. Bergdahl's release this weekend as part of an exchange with the U.S. for five top Taliban operatives who were being held in Guantanamo Bay has prompted those servicemen to speak out. Jake Tapper at CNN reports.

Flashback: A reminder about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion problem By Michelle Malkin • May 31, 2014 08:51 PM While many people jumped aboard the Bowe Bergdahl bandwagon, I was not one of them. His release today in exchange for five Taliban commanders who had been in custody at Gitmo underscores troubling questions that have persisted since his alleged abduction. Longtime readers will recall questions raised here about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance. Here’s a flashback from my July 20, 2009 blog post:

In late January, a mentally ill man was shot and killed by two police officers in Lodi, Calif., south of Sacramento. Tragedy often follows a confrontation between the police and a mentally ill person, but the facts of this case are in dispute. The victim was a Sikh Army veteran, and his death has roiled the Sikh community and the city. On a recent Saturday evening, more than 100 people gathered at the Sikh temple in the largely agricultural community of Lodi, to remember Parminder Shergill. Shergill was a 43-year-old Gulf War veteran who had served in Germany and Iraq....

I need help for my dear friend Joshua Eisenhauer Here is a video summary: http://youtu.be/Pvr8SBu0dLg Joshua Eisenhauer is a U.S. Army soldier who suffered severe and debilitating wounds while serving in Afghanistan. Joshua now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) as a direct result of those injuries and his combat experiences in Afghanistan. The PTSD has caused Joshua to have flashbacks on multiple occasions, including the night of January 13, 2012 when members of the Fayetteville, North Carolina Fire Department came to his apartment in response to a small fire in his apartment complex....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Remember the other day we played audio sound bites of President Obama's commencement speech to the cadets at West Point. (interruption) Was that yesterday? It seems like -- was that just yesterday? (interruption) Are you kidding me? Man. It does seem like it's longer than a day ago. Anyway, do you know that only 25% of the cadets stood or applauded or something when he entered the room or when he left? I forget which. It's a really low number. Either way, it's a hopeful sign. But what's funny, you know, we spent a lot of time...

Sgt. 1st Class John Taffe might be the oldest person to graduate from basic combat training. Sgt. 1st Class John Taffe may be 55 years old, but he definitely doesn’t act his age. That’s because Taffe may possibly be the oldest person to graduate from basic combat training – tackling sit-ups, push-ups and barbed-wire low crawls like any other young soldier in his class. A resident of Alameda, Taffe graduated from Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Thursday after a demanding 2 1/2-month training. He’s a former sailor, having served 14 years with the U.S. Navy before being released from active duty...

At an unknown campaign stop before the presidential election, now President-elect Petro Poroshenko promised to make strengthening the Ukrainian army his top priority. Porohsenko said he could attract volunteers by upping the salary from $50 a month to $83 a day and providing each volunteer with $83,000 in life insurance. He pledged to make the change on May 26. EuroMaidan PR, the official public relations arm of the EuroMaidan Revolution, made the subtitles to the 1:17 video.

Old soldiers never die, they just do more sit-ups. Just ask Sgt. 1st Class John Taffe of Alameda. At age 55, he can do more sit-ups - and push-ups, and barbed-wire maneuvers - than most people half his age. He graduates Thursday from combat basic training in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, one of the oldest soldiers to ever do so. "When I left for Missouri, my 15-year-old son said, 'Dad, I hope the Army knocks you off your high horse.' Now I can tell him, 'Nope. It just made me stronger,' " Taffe said Wednesday. To make it through the...

Obama’s “philosophical” speech to the 2014 graduates of West Point about a new direction for America’s foreign policy was “not a great” speech for that audience, said CNN anchor Jim Clancy on Wednesday. He said that the president did not sound like a “commander-in-chief speaking to his troops” and got an “icy reception” as a result...

The chief of an Army medical center has been relieved of his command because of problems with patient care, and the Pentagon has ordered a review of its health care system, defense officials said. The commander was replaced Tuesday at Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and three deputies were suspended, the Army said in a statement. The shake-up comes after two deaths this month of patients in their 20s and problems with infection control at the facility that were pointed out in March by a hospital accreditation group, according to two defense officials. They spoke on...

....Obama is coming to West Point Wednesday to give the graduation address.... ...excitement over West Point graduation tends to focus more on the cadets than on the speaker...

Americans say the U.S. Army is the most important service branch to national defense, but the Marine Corps is still considered the most prestigious, said a Gallup poll released Friday. The annual poll​, timed to mark the start of the long Memorial Day weekend, showed that 26 percent of Americans say the Army is the most important military branch, followed closely by the Air Force at 23 percent. The Marine Corp was called the most important by 19 percent, the Navy by 17 percent and the Coast Guard by 3 percent, the poll found.

An Army Ranger who helped rescue former POW Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital in 2003 has died after being shot in Afghanistan, the Defense Department announced Thursday.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Uncle Sam doesn’t want you. At least 80 percent of you. These days, the U.S. military is only taking 20 percent of the applicants who walk into their local recruiter’s office intent on enlisting in the armed services. Army Sgt. 1st Class Terrence Hoard told the Kansas City Star that his recruitment office once needed to sign up 16 to 20 soldiers per month to meet recruitment goals. Today, he can get by with 10 to 12. “We’re turning down twice as many as before,” he told the paper, which reported that four of every five adults who seek to...

Congressman Tom Cotton lays out exactly why the Democrats’ “fake outrage” over the Benghazi hearing is not exactly credible coming from a party whose members acted with partisan acrimony over an Iraq War that they voted for and took no responsibility for carrying out. “Forgive me if I don’t join my Democratic colleagues in their fake outrage. Four Americans lost their lives that night at Benghazi. They deserve justice. The American people deserve the truth. One other lesson I learned in the Army is we leave no man behind. And we will not leave these four men behind.”

In her last moments of life, Army nurse Capt. Jennifer Moreno heard two orders. One was a call to help a wounded soldier struck by a blast in a booby-trapped killing field at an Afghanistan bomb-making compound. The other was a command to stay put lest she strike another mine in the bomb belt. The nurse from Madigan Army Medical Center chose to help the wounded soldier, and gave her life trying. (snip) Moreno heard a call from a staff sergeant to help a wounded soldier. At the same time, the battle’s ground commander told all of the soldiers to...

It’s not just the armored police vehicles… The Lewiston, Maine police department unveiled the MARCbot IV, or Multi-Functional Agile Remote Controlled Robot, fresh from the U.S. Army and complete with an Xbox controller. The vehicle and the robot were free to the LPD from the Obama administration as a reallocation of military surplus.Meanwhile, the Elgin City Council will consider a police department proposal to purchase an armored vehicle like this one to use in dangerous situationsElgin, Illinois will vote this week to approve the police department’s request for an armored vehicle.Then there’s this…Police departments across the nation are recruiting potential...

Bradley Edward Manning is no more. A Kansas judge on Wednesday granted the former Army intelligence analyst's request to formally be known as Chelsea Elizabeth Manning. "I've been working for months for this change, and waiting for years," she said in a statement applauding the order. "It's worth noting that in both mail and in-person, I've often been asked, 'Why are you changing your name?' The answer couldn't be simpler: because it's a far better, richer, and more honest reflection of who I am and always have been -- a woman named Chelsea." Manning is currently serving a 35-year sentence...