Word: soldier
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Joint Special Operations Task Force, which provides military assistance, training and intelligence assistance to Philippine forces. Coultrup's 500 men, who include Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, are spread throughout the Philippines. Inside a nondescript, windowless building at the task force's Jolo Island base, a half-dozen soldiers are studying laptops. A large screen on the wall shows the video feed from an unmanned drone cruising over potential Abu Sayyaf hideouts in the jungle. The U.S. troops give vital advice about operations but are barred from taking part in combat missions and must stay well beyond small-arms...
...counterinsurgency techniques and close cooperation between the Iraqi and American armies. The success here may be a model for Iraqi-U.S. Army cooperation in the future, and many American commanders in the region attribute a large part of the success to "General Ali's" skill as a professional soldier. "He has been here from the beginning," says Lieutenant Colonel William Zemp, the U.S. commander of a unit that works daily with General Ali's men. "The pacification of this area is his struggle, it is his story...
...Hours later, he was called on to respond to another crisis, when Colombian authorities announced the arrest of a Venezuelan army sergeant ferrying 40,000 cartridges for AK-47 rifles to FARC guerrillas. Venezuela insists the soldier was corrupt and acting on his own. Conservative Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a key U.S. ally, has for months accused Chavez, a staunch FARC supporter, of funneling aid to the rebels. The charge, he claims, is supported by alleged evidence from laptop computers belonging to a top FARC commander killed in a commando raid last March. Chavez vehemently denies it and insists...
...least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, including 36 in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army said on May 29. That's the highest toll since it started keeping such records in 1980. Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs - overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. While the Army cites failed relationships as the primary cause, some outside experts sense a link between suicides and prescription-drug use - though there is also no way of knowing how many suicide attempts the antidepressants may have prevented by improving a soldier's spirits...
...giving stressed troops a little rest and relaxation to see if they improved. "If they didn't get better right away, they'd need to head to the rear and probably out of theater." But in his most recent stint in Baghdad in 2006, he treated a soldier who guarded Iraqi detainees. "He was distraught while he was having high-level interactions with detainees, having emotional confrontations with them - and carrying weapons," Horam says. "But he was part of a highly trained team, and we didn't want to lose him. So we put him on an SSRI, and within...