Nancy Montgomery
Stars and Stripes — European edition
March 5, 2010

One of U.S. Army Europe’s highest-ranking sergeants will be court-martialed on charges of aggravated sexual assault and maltreatment of a young specialist, according to military officials.

The case of Sgt. Maj. Garry Tull was referred on Wednesday to a general court-martial by the V Corps commander, Brig. Gen. Michael Ryan, a month after the sergeant major’s Article 32 hearing, according to public affairs officials. Article 32 hearings are held to determine whether enough evidence exists to prosecute a case.

To read the full story in The Stars and Stripes, click here.

Peter Ford
Christian Science Monitor
March 2, 2010

After 65 years of living alongside more than a dozen US military bases, most Okinawa residents have had enough of the noise, the potential danger, and the occasional friction caused by 18,000 Marines and their machinery.

The rape of a young girl by US soldiers in 1995 has not been forgotten; the crash of a helicopter into Okinawa International University in 2004 (miraculously nobody died) is constantly evoked; and the general nuisance is widely resented.

To read the full story in the Christian Science Monitor, click here.

John Brinsley and Sachiko Sakamaki
Bloomberg News Service via BusinessWeek
March 3, 2010

Japan’s government will keep a U.S. military base on Okinawa, meeting the demands of the Obama administration, even if that means alienating a coalition partner and local people, a vice defense minister said.

Okinawan residents, who want the Marine base moved off the island, will be offered “compensation” for accepting the government’s decision, Akihisa Nagashima said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday, without elaborating. His remarks are the most definitive by a government member indicating the base will stay on Okinawa.

To read the full article at the BusinessWeek web site, click here.

Ann Wright
CommonDreams.org
February 15, 2010

A Department of Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military told a Congressional committee on February 3, 2010 that “DoD’s procedures for collecting and documenting data about military sexual assault incidents are lacking in accuracy, reliability, and validity.”

In what many see as the reality of the military institution investigating itself on the criminal acts of sexual assault and rape committed by its own personnel, the naming of Task Force members and the work of the Task Force was delayed for three years. Following a congressional request, in October, 2005, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense authorized the DOD Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military, but DOD took three years to name the Task Force and for the Task Force to have its initial meeting in August, 2008.

To read Ann Wright’s full story at CommonDreams.org, click here.

Christie Blatchford
The Globe and Mail
February 11, 2010

Colonel Russell Williams has given police a lengthy and wide-ranging statement about four dozen so-called “lingerie break-ins,” two home invasions that turned into bizarre sexual assaults last September, and the murders of two young women, one a military steward with whom he may have flown.

To read the full story in The Globe and Mail, click here.

Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
February 3, 2010

Mike Mullen’s 42 years in the military earned him a chest full of ribbons, but never did he do something braver than what he did on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

In a packed committee room, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked hostile Republican senators in the eye and told them unwelcome news: He thinks gays should be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces he commands.

“Speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do,” the nation’s top military officer told the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

To read the full story in The Washington Post, click here.

Derek Wallbank
MinnPost.com
February 1, 2010

The White House has included Sen. Al Franken’s anti-rape amendment, which would prohibit Defense contracts of more than $1 million (a vast majority of them) from going to firms that required their employees to accept binding arbitration for claims of sexual or any other kind of harassment.

The Franken Amendment, as it has become known, was successfully attached to the Fiscal 2010 Defense Appropriations bill.

via MinnPost – D.C. Dispatches: Franken amendment on rape included in FY-11 budget and H-Minerva.

Eric Talmadge
The Associated Press (Chicago Tribune)
January 6, 2010

When the U.S. took over a Japanese airfield here in the closing days of World War II, it was surrounded by sugar cane fields and the smoldering battlegrounds of Okinawa. It is now the focus of a deepening dispute that is testing Japan’s security alliance with the United States and dividing its new government in Tokyo.

A large city has grown up around the base, and helicopters and cargo planes from the U.S. Marine Corps facility buzz so low over Futenma No. 2 Elementary School, whose playground fence borders the facility, that the windows rattle and teachers stop class until the aircraft are on the ground.

To read the full story in the Chicago Tribune, click here.

Robert Gavin
Times Union
January 23, 2010

The mother of Staff Sgt. Amy Seyboth Tirador, a Colonie, New York native slain in Iraq in November, said Friday she believes military investigators are “leaning toward” ruling her daughter’s death a suicide.

Tirador, 29, was killed November 4th, the victim of a gunshot to the back of her head while walking to an evening work shift on the U.S. military base Camp Caldwell in Kirkush, Iraq, near Iran.

To read the full story in the Times Union, click here.

Martin Fackler
The New York Times
January 25, 2010

A candidate who opposes the relocation of an American air base on Okinawa won a crucial mayoral election on Sunday, raising pressure on Japan’s prime minister to move the base off the island, a move opposed by the United States.

The election in the small city of Nago could force Japan to scrap, or at least significantly modify, a 2006 deal with the United States to build a replacement facility in the city for the busy Futenma United States Marine air station.

To read the full story in The New York Times, click here.