Free Republic

Killeen's homeless have nowhere to go, and that means dozens, possibly hundreds of our veterans are stuck out in the cold. More than 62 thousand American veterans are living on the streets. Nickie, a 58-yr old Vietnam Marine veteran, is one of them, but the Fort Hood area doesn't have any homeless shelters, turning cold nights into life or death battles that leave Nickie wondering. "Am I going to make it until tomorrow? Am I going to make it, straight up," said Nickie with tears in his eyes. A few warming centers open, but only when temperatures dip below freezing,...

Fort Hood shootings: FBI given gunman's name six months ago The US Army major who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at America's biggest military base had come to the attention of the FBI six months earlier over possible links to extremist comments posted on the internet. By Gordon Rayner and Nick Allen in Fort Hood, Texas Published: 9:59PM GMT 06 Nov 2009 Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout Muslim who was trying to buy his way out of the Army, was suspected of being the author of postings which compared suicide bombers to heroic soldiers who throw themselves...

The military psychiatrist accused of gunning down 12 people in Texas lived most of his life in the D.C. area where he was considered a caring Muslim by friends -- but he had recently made disturbing statements about suicide attacks. U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, earned a degree from Virginia Tech, completed a residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and attended prayer services nearly every day in Silver Spring for several years. He was described as a caring person by a local Muslim leader, but those who got to know him after he was transferred to Fort...

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the US military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a “tragedy” (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the “war on terror”. Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America’s enemy abroad were killed...

Poetry and lore speak of a mother’s grief, a mother’s tears for a deceased child. So perhaps the spotlight after her soldier-son’s death in 2004 was bound to be captured by Cindy Sheehan. For Pat Sheehan, the very private role of simply continuing to be Casey’s father has been enough - until recently, that is. In a blip of publicity Cindy Sheehan bowed out of her diminishing limelight, announcing that she would stop her activism against the Iraq war. In doing so, she declared that Casey Sheehan “did indeed die for nothing.” That statement ended Pat Sheehan’s silence. He called...

CAMP TAJI, Iraq - When members of the Army's 4th Infantry Division were called out on extra duty that night in December 2003, they thought it was just another routine mission. By the next day, they had bragging rights as part of the team that caught Saddam Hussein. As Saddam faces a scheduled verdict and sentencing Sunday in his first crimes-against-humanity trial, many of the soldiers who helped seal off his small riverside compound are back in Iraq on another tour of duty.The memory of that fateful mission is fading among the new threats they face."I wouldn't take it back...