Military Matters
Fort Riley troops arrive in Baghdad
Posted Monday, March 5, 2007
Here are recent headlines about the military in Kansas:
Fort Riley * 1st Infantry Division
(Washington Post) Sunni tribesmen help Iraqi forces in fierce fighting in western Iraq: As the Baghdad security plan entered its third week, an additional 3,100 U.S. soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., have arrived in the capital, bringing the total number of new U.S. troops to nearly 6,000. President Bush is sending 21,500 troops to Iraq in an attempt to stem rampant sectarian fighting.
(AP) Tanks, fighting vehicles delivered to Fort Riley: Col. Norb Jocz smiled widely at the scene at the Fort Riley railhead late last week -- about 150 railcars loaded with heavy fighting vehicles. Jocz commands the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division, which is receiving the M1A2 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Now involved in Fort Riley's military transition team training mission, Jocz's unit is being converted into a heavy brigade combat team that will reflag as the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. Much of the 3rd Brigade's armored equipment and soldiers left Fort Riley when it redeployed from its second tour in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. About half of its 1,200 soldiers will deploy soon to Afghanistan with the 70th Engineer Battalion. The buildup now under way will raise the brigade's strength to more than 3,800 soldiers. Friday's delivery was the third of seven taking place over several weeks.
Fort Leavenworth
(WCBD.com) Fund Set to Bring Home SC Troops: A fund has been started to raise $40,000 to bring S.C. Army Reserve and National Guard troops home on leave in April. "We're going to bring our soldiers home for 10 days with their families before they deploy to Afghanistan," said Sen. Jake Knotts (R-Lexington), who is establishing the fund. More than 1,000 S.C. soldiers of the 218th Enhanced Brigade are training for deployment to the war in Afghanistan at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The Army has granted the soldiers 10 days leave, but no funds to come home.
(London Review of Books) It Migrates to Them: But who are the enemies of the wealthy West, apart from (the wealthy) al-Qaida and the new wave of adversaries we've recruited with the invasion of Iraq? For an answer, Davis quotes a 1995 article by the Fort Leavenworth researcher Geoffrey Demarest: potentially the 'dispossessed' in general; 'excluded populations' everywhere; 'criminal syndicates'; slum children coming of age (ripe for child soldiering as religious martyrs or warlord cannon fodder). In short, the extremely poor and extremely oppressed, which as this book makes clear means an awful lot of enemies.
(TheLedger.com) Robert Kingston, 78, First Chief of U.S. Central Command: Robert Kingston, an Army general and highly decorated combat veteran who served in the early 1980s as the first chief of U.S. Central Command, which deploys ground, sea and air units to the Middle East, died Wednesday at the Ruxton Health Care nursing home in suburban Alexandria, Va. He had complications from a fall at his home in suburban Fairfax County, Va. He was 78. ... Robert Charles Kingston was born July 16, 1928, in Brookline, Mass., and joined the Army at 18. He graduated from what is now the University of Nebraska at Omaha and received a master's degree in foreign relations from George Washington University. He also graduated from the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
(Montgomery Advertiser) Future leaders play tough at wargaming: Students from the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies were assisted by the Air Force Public Affairs Center of Excellence in dealing with the news media while conducting a terrorist-related exercise at the Air Force Wargaming Institute last week. Called "Theater Campaign Warfare," the wargame scenario involved, among other elements, three seagoing vessels with dirty bombs approaching the United States, one of which detonated two miles off the coast of Tampa, Fla. Lt. Col. Ruth Latham, PACE media control chief and individual mobilization augmentee to the director, said TCW is the capstone wargame for SAASS and was augmented by participation of students from the School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, Kan. and the Naval Operational Planning Course, Newport, R.I. to develop greater cross-service appreciation of theater operational issues.
Kansas National Guard
(Wichita Eagle) Wichita soldier remembered as loving, quiet, brave: A Wichita soldier remembered for his crooked smile, love of hunting and long courtship was buried here Sunday, 10 days after his death in Iraq. Staff Sgt. David Russell Berry, a member of the Kansas National Guard's 1st Battalion, was killed by an improvised explosive device in Qasim, Iraq, a few weeks before his 38th birthday. He had been due to rotate home in April. "He was just a very solid soldier," Lt. Col. David Johnson said of Berry, who in 2005 received the highest peacetime medal that a soldier can get, for rescuing a motorist from a burning vehicle. "He was quiet, had a good sense of humor. He was well-respected by everybody."
(49abcnews) Sebelius speaks about trip to D.C.: (Sebelius) says the group shared stories about the on-going problems they've had dealing with the missing National Guard equipment. Sebelius says this leaves Kansas vulnerable to local natural disasters, because the resources to protect the state aren't there, and it put the troops overseas in danger. She also shared some other governor's horror stories about how bad the equipment situation has actually gotten "We heard in two cases from governors whose National Guard troops were sent over to Iraq in the last two months, with welding equipment so they could up armor, hopefully, with bits and pieces they would find over there the equipment they were being sent with," the governor said. Sebelius also spoke about a bad day for Kansas. Last week, eight Kansas National Guard members were injured in an explosion. The governor visited one of them who is recovering at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
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